i want to know what love is
Have you ever had those lunches that turn awkward before the food comes? This happened to me once. I was at lunch with a fellow who was upset about something. The server brought us water to drink, and he began to speak about what was bothering him. It turns out that his beef was with love. Really, he was upset with the idea of love.
He began to illustrate what he meant by telling a story about another individual. He spilled way too much information about this other guy’s dark secrets and then provided the clincher. He said, in a very animated way, “And you know what, this guys says, ‘I am sorry’ and everyone acts like everything is okay!’”
He then spoke about how people in the church today do not want to deal with sin anymore, all they want to talk about is love. He concluded in frustration by saying, “So we just love people and that is it!”
I sat puzzled for a time listening to him. I asked him what vehicle God used in response to sin. He said "The blood of Jesus." I asked him what motivated Jesus to spill his blood at all for people like the guy who said he was sorry. He said, "Grace." I asked him what motivates grace. He said the character of the person giving it.
At this point the lunch got awkward. I then told him that I was pretty connected to the guy who said that he was sorry. I also told him that I was one of those people who understood him to be sincere in his apology, and therefore was one of those acting like everything is okay. Then, I concluded that grace comes not from the character of any person. Grace, I contended is rooted deep within the very essence of God. “That essence is love.”
I can understand the idea, at some level, that people who are bad no longer receive what they deserve. For those with a high sense of fairness this can be frustrating. But isn’t that love? Love is the most unfair thing in the world. There is nothing that makes sense about it.
Maybe this is why God is so hard to understand. Because God is love.
The Christian faith states that God exists in Three Persons – Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. We call this mystery the Trinity. People spend countless amounts of hours trying to explain the Trinity. They talk about water, ice, and steam. Or they speak of an egg with its shell, whites, and yolk. While all of these word pictures are clever, they are all incomplete. This is why the Trinity is called a mystery.
One piece of the mystery of the Trinity, that is truly more difficult to comprehend than one being three or three being one, is the eternal community that exists within the person of God. As humans we cannot even begin to wrap our heads around this.
This community exists in perfect love. Miroslav Volf, my favorite theologian (and no this is not code for Bono), says that God exists in “mutual, divine, self-giving love.” In other words, God can exist completely and eternally in community because the Son holds nothing back from the Spirit or the Father. He gives all that he is to them, with no fear of feeling empty, because the Father and Spirit are giving all that they are to him. This is true love. Total and complete giving all the time to the other with no other motive than giving and love.
At the lunch table, our food arrived and this other fellow wanted to point out the way that Jesus boldly spoke against sin in his day. He was right. Jesus in fact did. However, most often Jesus called out those representing the religious establishment. He said things like, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean!” He was also seen weeping over Jerusalem, longing to have gathered them like a mother hen gather her chicks.
Beyond that his ultimate response to evil was the cross.* Which is the ultimate act of love. The act of death on the cross was also the most unfair treatment of the evil in our world. This whole thing is really bothersome, mostly the Scriptures instruct us to act like Jesus. As the Church we are to be the embodiment of this kind of love. We are able to be this, because God who exists in community, who is love, invites all men and women into community with him.
Which would mean that love should characterize all that we do, even when it comes to dealing with sin – both systemic and personal. This does not mean that we ignore the crap in people’s life. The people who love me the most are the ones who are constantly encouraging me to live better. They are the one’s who speak not when the plank is their own eye, and when they do speak, do so gently, and seeing clearly can remove the massive amounts of wood from my eye.
*One note, I do not believe that the only reason for Jesus' death, burial, and ressurection was simply the sin of the individual, so that all people can have a personal and private relationship with him. This thought seems to cheapen the expense of the cross.
He began to illustrate what he meant by telling a story about another individual. He spilled way too much information about this other guy’s dark secrets and then provided the clincher. He said, in a very animated way, “And you know what, this guys says, ‘I am sorry’ and everyone acts like everything is okay!’”
He then spoke about how people in the church today do not want to deal with sin anymore, all they want to talk about is love. He concluded in frustration by saying, “So we just love people and that is it!”
I sat puzzled for a time listening to him. I asked him what vehicle God used in response to sin. He said "The blood of Jesus." I asked him what motivated Jesus to spill his blood at all for people like the guy who said he was sorry. He said, "Grace." I asked him what motivates grace. He said the character of the person giving it.
At this point the lunch got awkward. I then told him that I was pretty connected to the guy who said that he was sorry. I also told him that I was one of those people who understood him to be sincere in his apology, and therefore was one of those acting like everything is okay. Then, I concluded that grace comes not from the character of any person. Grace, I contended is rooted deep within the very essence of God. “That essence is love.”
I can understand the idea, at some level, that people who are bad no longer receive what they deserve. For those with a high sense of fairness this can be frustrating. But isn’t that love? Love is the most unfair thing in the world. There is nothing that makes sense about it.
Maybe this is why God is so hard to understand. Because God is love.
The Christian faith states that God exists in Three Persons – Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. We call this mystery the Trinity. People spend countless amounts of hours trying to explain the Trinity. They talk about water, ice, and steam. Or they speak of an egg with its shell, whites, and yolk. While all of these word pictures are clever, they are all incomplete. This is why the Trinity is called a mystery.
One piece of the mystery of the Trinity, that is truly more difficult to comprehend than one being three or three being one, is the eternal community that exists within the person of God. As humans we cannot even begin to wrap our heads around this.
This community exists in perfect love. Miroslav Volf, my favorite theologian (and no this is not code for Bono), says that God exists in “mutual, divine, self-giving love.” In other words, God can exist completely and eternally in community because the Son holds nothing back from the Spirit or the Father. He gives all that he is to them, with no fear of feeling empty, because the Father and Spirit are giving all that they are to him. This is true love. Total and complete giving all the time to the other with no other motive than giving and love.
At the lunch table, our food arrived and this other fellow wanted to point out the way that Jesus boldly spoke against sin in his day. He was right. Jesus in fact did. However, most often Jesus called out those representing the religious establishment. He said things like, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean!” He was also seen weeping over Jerusalem, longing to have gathered them like a mother hen gather her chicks.
Beyond that his ultimate response to evil was the cross.* Which is the ultimate act of love. The act of death on the cross was also the most unfair treatment of the evil in our world. This whole thing is really bothersome, mostly the Scriptures instruct us to act like Jesus. As the Church we are to be the embodiment of this kind of love. We are able to be this, because God who exists in community, who is love, invites all men and women into community with him.
Which would mean that love should characterize all that we do, even when it comes to dealing with sin – both systemic and personal. This does not mean that we ignore the crap in people’s life. The people who love me the most are the ones who are constantly encouraging me to live better. They are the one’s who speak not when the plank is their own eye, and when they do speak, do so gently, and seeing clearly can remove the massive amounts of wood from my eye.
*One note, I do not believe that the only reason for Jesus' death, burial, and ressurection was simply the sin of the individual, so that all people can have a personal and private relationship with him. This thought seems to cheapen the expense of the cross.