HEREIN IS LOVE
“Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and
he who loves is born of God and knows God.”—1 John 4:7
Thus far, we have identified the Christian life as participation in the life of Christ, and the Christian fellowship as the relationship of men who have been reunited to one another by the presence in them of the Spirit of Christ. We need to make this concept even more specific and, therefore, now ask the question: “How does one participate in the life of Christ; how does one find the Spirit; what must one do?” The gospel’s answer is: “You shall love.”[11] It has surpassing attraction, but is also considerably disappointing. Love is appealing, but its practice is appallingly difficult. While the Christian relationship seems to promise a difference, it is hard to identify. What makes the difference? or, What is the Good News?
The Gift of God in Christ
Christians believe that the gift of God in Christ confers something that man needs but has lost. What is it that we do not have that we are supposed to receive as a result of our new relationship with Christ? Let us recall that in our earlier discussion we took note of the ambivalent character of love. We want to be loved and we are afraid to accept love; we want to love and are afraid to give love for fear it will not be accepted. We are not free to love, therefore; that which by nature we cannot have is the freedom to love. We believe that God is love. Creation is the work of His love, and love is the work of His44 creation. But the ambivalences of human nature keep us from being free in the work of love. The coming of Christ, in the midst of history, changed the balance of power between love and hate, life and death, and set us free to love. Love became the energizing, reconciling force in human existence. B.C. and A.D. marked the transition, not only of time, but also of the old creation in which our power of love was imprisoned in our fear to love, and of the new creation in which our power of love was set free by the love of God in Christ. Now the triumphant power of God’s love is at work in the world and is available to all who seek to do the work of love anywhere and for anyone. Accordingly, the work of love was and is the breaking down of walls of separation, and the reuniting of man and God, man and man, and man with himself, in all which work we participate.
What Is Love?
Do we know what we mean when we think of love in this way? A clear understanding of love is needed, because it is so gravely misunderstood in our time. All too commonly, love is regarded as a sentiment, a feeling, a “liking” for someone. While sentiment and emotion are certainly a part of love, it is tragic to make them synonymous with love. Certainly we mean more than that when we say, “God is love,” or when we wrestle with the concept of man showing his love of God through his love for his neighbor. In these concepts we are thinking of love as the moving, creating, healing power of life; of love that is “the moving power of everything toward everything else that is.”[12] Love reunites life with life, person with person, and as such is not easily discouraged. The most dramatic symbol of love’s courage and triumph is, as we have seen, the cross and the resurrection; it stands for the love wherewith God has loved us. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us….”[13] Having given45 us His love, we have it for our response to Him, so that we love Him by loving one another with His love which we received through His people. Thus, the nurturing of our response to God’s love is the work of the church. Our responsibility is to love Him. We are to love God by loving one another, and in loving one another we introduce one another to God. This is the work of the church and the vocation of the people of God. We are called to love one another reunitingly with the love wherewith God loved us.
In order for us to participate in the love of God which is at work in the world, we need to understand ourselves and our own creaturely problems in relation to love. Too much Christian thought about love and its work is abstract rather than a reckoning with the complications of human existence. In order to avoid this danger, let us turn to a consideration of what is involved in recovering our freedom to love.