The Love of God

THE LOVE OF GOD

“But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5)

The cruelty of God is more loving than the love of men. If this were not so why do we need an entire Bible to teach us to love? In Christianity there are two “Gods.” The first is God as I wish Him to be and He is simply an extension of myself and He is very easy to love. He thinks and acts like I do but He does not exist except in my imagination. The second and true God is the One who is revealed in scripture and being quite unlike me is much harder to love, not because of a deficiency in Him, but of one in me. He violates my conception of love in a thousand ways and on every page of the Bible from causing calamity (Isaiah 45:5-7) to killing babies who have done no wrong (2 Samuel 12:13-18). And in this and countless other examples He demands that we affirm not just His right but His goodness in all of this. GOD IS LOVE!

Love is a seamless garment and can only be defined by Him. Our’s is an all too human love. The commandments are the backbone of what it means to love God and man and when we ignore some of them that we don’t like we rend the garment that is love. The commandment to discipline the body of Christ is illustrative of this(Matthew 18:15-20 & 1 Corinthians 5). To discipline is to love in the face of unrepentant sin and there are no exceptions (including family members) because these commandments define love under this condition. Similarly, the commandment for wives to fear their husbands (the word in Ephesians 5:33 is phobeo) is an expression of love. The body of Christ largely ignores this because it too easily loves that first God who is an extension of ourselves. That God says fear and love are mutually exclusive because that is what we foolishly believe. But the God of the Bible knows better, that properly placed fear is a virtue and that love and fear must coexist. Much sin and heartache is unleashed when the church embraces the vices that the Bible proscribes. It may be that even more harm is done when we dismember the virtues from one another – love is a seamless garment.

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