God's Love

Recently, I had the great pleasure and honor of hearing preach a minister by the name of Joseph Prince, as he took care to remind us of the crucial importance of God's Love. Prince observed (and I've no doubt the Holy Spirit guided his attention) that, while Saint Peter boasted of his love for God and, before the sun rose the next day, denied knowing Christ three times, Saint John boasted instead of God's love for him, and was the only disciple present at the foot of the cross.

The message is obviously one of humility, but, more specifically, it is about relying upon that infiinite reservoir of love, which may only be found in God (or to which, having experienced, one can only think to apply the name of "God"); as opposed to the self-important tendency of trusting in, or looking to, one's own love, as a means and measure of salvation.

It is not our love for God, but God's Love for us, which has the power to save. Indeed, the former, no matter how great, can scarcely be compared to the latter without running the risk of blasphemy. Our love is limited, but His is infinite; being the very substance and essence of love itself. Nonetheless, God's Love, which is freely given to all without distinction, cannot save us if it is not believed in, understood, and received.

One must learn to feel oneself embraced fully by this love, or one never will be. In matters of the spirit, what we are unconscious of is as though it were not; "for there is nothing evil in itself, but whosoever thinketh any thing evil, to him it is evil". Now, if that which is not evil in itself may yet become evil in the mind of man, how much more so can that which is good in itself (namely, God) be revealed as good in the mind of man? After all, what can we say in all certainty about the mind of man, but that it creates evil and discovers good; for evil is precisely that which man has made, and good is precisely that which God has given.

This was the purpose of Christ's mission on earth; not to pay, with his own blood, some outstanding karmic debt incurred by mankind (not literally, anyway), -- for we know that each soul must work out it's own salvation "in fear and trembling"; but, to provide the example and prototype of a soul infused with the knowledge, or gnosis, of God's Love.

Christ is "The Divine Word" because he articulates, not merely in his own words, but in his deeds, and even by his very existence, the most sacred truth which can be communicated to human beings; that is, the three-fold truth, or Trinity, of God's love for us, the limitless power of that love to heal and sanctify the immortal soul of every one of us, and the destiny of every soul to ultimately realize and receive this inestimable grace from the hands of God.

I do not say that Christ's love for God, nor the love of the saints for God, is too much praised. On the contrary, it is infinitely deserving of praise, and the children of God are all-too incapable of rendering the praise that is due. Nevertheless, I make the point that what is still more deserving of reverence, and far more needful of mention, is God's great love for Christ, the saints, and ourselves; which is, in any case, the true source and essence of all other manifestations of love, however exalted they may be.

Christ tells us that it is only God's Love for him which has become his own love for all the children of God. He loves us, because God first loves him. Moreover, following this pattern, Christ enjoins us also to love one another, "as I have loved you"; and as God has loved him. He tries to make it abundantly clear that the love he bears us comes, ultimately, not from himself, but from The Father, who sent him (i.e. who loved him).

This deep love for God and mankind does not arise suddenly and out of nothing, in the singular person of Jesus Christ. Rather, it is a natural outgrowth, or fruit, of the deep experience of God's Love, which only becomes known (at least, in so far as Western Civilization is concerned) in the person of Jesus Christ.

To prove this point, we have only to consider the following argument:

What is it that we love in God, if it is not God's Love? In itself, but also as it embraces all creatures, God's Love is the very lodestone which draws our hearts to Him. Is it at all to be doubted, or marvelled at, that there is nothing in the world so loveable as Love Itself; that nothing so inclines the heart towards love as the very Heart of Love?

Why else is Christ so universally beloved, but that he loved us? And why else did he love us, but that God so saturated his own heart with love that he had no recourse but to pour out the overflow of that same love upon all who came into his presence? Indeed, it is because of love, and only love, that Christ is even present at all; for his memory would not be so honored, nor his presence so felt, were he not the living embodiment of God's Love for us.

Likewise, we must set it down that no man who has not experienced God's Love, -- who has not had his being tranformed, to its very core, by the awareness of God's infinite and all-encompassing Love, -- may be called a vessel of the Holy Spirit, and a bearer of the light which is in Christ Jesus. Whatever understanding we may aspire to, and hope to reflect by faith (in accordance with the will of God), is partial and incomplete, so long as it does not arise directly from the felt experience of Divine Love.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face..."

Now I preach the Word of God's Love, but my preaching is by faith, and not by the authority of Jesus Christ -- which I never intended to make any pretense to having acquired. I write only what I believe; having lent an eager ear to the testimonies of many holy persons, and having received their witness by faith. I cannot claim to experience, or to ever have experienced, a thoroughly transformative influx of God's Love. I live not yet by that Love, but by my faith in it; imperfect though it may be.

Though my own fruit has not ripened, I have been grafted onto the vine which is Christ, and you may find me waiting, in joyful expectation, for the warm sap of mystical experience, and the fructifying grace of the Holy Spirit, which turns all hearts to God, as all flowers turn their faces towards the salutary face of the sun.