God is Love
Genuine Christians do not confess that love is God; they confess that God, as the Almighty Lord, is Love. In fact, the early Christians took a Greek word, agape, and made it their special word for speaking of the love that is in God, the love by which God reaches out to save sinful creatures and the love which he places in their souls as he saves them from sin.
The first occurrence of “God is Love” is in John’s Gospel. He wrote: “He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Can love only take gentle sentimental expressions? The God who is Love is also the God of justice and righteousness. Further, anyone who tries to drive a wedge between the wrath and the love of God is not being instructed by the Holy Scriptures in his thinking. The God who punishes the disobedient is truly the God who is Love. Common Prayer Tradition is very clear and directs worshippers always to God’s self revelation in sacred Scripture for an understanding of what is genuine love, compassion, mercy and grace.
It is very important for us to grasp this point because the fact that God himself is Love is the basis of the divine command that we love God and one another. In the Epistle for the first Sunday after Trinity the second occurrence of “God is Love” is as follows: “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him … We Love him because he first loved us … he who loveth God loves his brother also.”
Before John wrote “God is love” he wrote “God is light.” He said: “This is the message which we declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. On this basis, John proceeded to call upon his readers to “walk in the light as God is in the light” and thereby to have fellowship one with another and to experience the power of the forgiving, cleansing blood of Jesus Christ in their hearts and in their fellowship. Not to walk in the light (that is, being enlightened and illumined by God’s self-revelation and presence) is to walk in darkness (that is, being “enlightened and illumined” by the ethos and standards of this sinful age and world). When we say “God is love”; we mean “God is holy love” and “God is righteous love.” God’s love is pure, holy, and righteous love. God’s love will, therefore, chastise and punish, for God is not in the business of making people happy who will not seek for holiness and purity of life. To know God as the Lord is to know God as the One who is entirely consistent in his character and his dealings with us.
Love, pure love, which is of God, begins within the Godhead and is the dynamic, holy essence of the relation of the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father, the relation of the Father to the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost to the Father, and the relation of the Son and the Holy Ghost to each other. From the Father through the Son and by the Holy Ghost all Love flows both into creation and into redemption.
The Common Prayer Tradition contains a full and always moving presentation of the love of God manifested in Jesus Christ, in his Incarnation, mission, passion, death, resurrection and exaltation. We know God because he first chooses to know us and our knowing of each other in fellowship is always within the covenant relation, which he establishes.
Baptism and Confirmation exist as Sacraments because of the holy love of God. Divine Love calls sinners, and in the love of God they believe and are baptized into his covenant to enjoy his steadfast, faithful love. The Daily Office exists as the appointed means of being encountered daily by God because of his holy love and goodness. In this daily discipline, centered upon God’s self-revelation recorded in Scripture and celebrated in Psalms and Canticles, there is a growing awareness of the height and depth, the breadth and length of the holy love of God.
The Holy Communion is pre-eminently the Sacrament of the holy love of God. Here is the Love which forgives, cleanses, justifies, sanctifies, unites to Christ, and feeds with heavenly manna at the heavenly table. There is the inner assurance of the covenant favor, grace, and tender mercy of God for believing sinners; and there is communion and union with the Lord Jesus Christ, wherein human spirit speaks to Spirit – “that he may dwell in us and we in him.” This is living knowledge indeed.
In “The Order for the Visitation of the Sick,” God’s tender mercy, love, and goodness are the divine realities which make this event meaningful and necessary. The purpose of the service is that the sick person may hear God’s gracious promises and truly know God and be known by him. Whether the sick person is to recover or whether he is to die, the aim is to make sure that he is in a right relation with God and knows that God the Father is Love and that Christ loves him now.
In “The Form of the Solemnization
of Matrimony” the word love occurs as the key word in the relation of the man
and woman in marriage. It is obvious
here that “love” is primarily a commitment of the person to a particular kind
of living together and caring throughout all possible circumstance; good and evil – “for better for worse, for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health.”
Love here is much more than sexual activity, affections and emotions. It is an act of the will determined to do the
utmost good to and for the other person in this relation of matrimony. And the theological context for marriage is
the heavenly marriage between Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as his
Bride; a relation brought into being
because Christ loved the Church and give himself up for her on his Cross at
Finally, we note that the service for “The Burial of the Dead” is based wholly on the doctrine of the love of God in Jesus Christ which pardons sin and gives the gift of eternal life to all who receive the Gospel. The first words are the wonderful promise of Jesus Christ: “I am the resurrection and the life …”
Perhaps to our surprise, the prayers within The Book of Common Prayer bring together “fear” and “love” as natural companions. “Make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy Holy Name,” is the petition in the Collect for Trinity 2. In the Offices of Instruction the duty of the baptized believer towards God is stated as, “to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength.”
Fear, as a godly affection of the soul, is a profound sense of reverence and awe felt by the genuinely penitent believer. He, a sinner, is aware both of the presence of the One true and living God, who is perfect in holiness and righteous, and of his duty to love and serve him, despite his sinfulness.
Fear is necessary on earth because it is wonderfully present in heaven. The fear present in heaven is the thrilling of beatific joy, the trembling of an ecstatic adoration. This fear in the redeemed people of God does not tremble because its blessedness is insecure, or because there is any cloud between God and itself. It trembles because of the tremendous Majesty which it sees, because of the amazing familiarity of communion to which it admitted, and because of the vehement intensity of love to which it is raised.
In knowing the Son, the congregation of Christ comes to know the Father through the presence of the Holy Ghost, and knowing God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the people of God have eternal life, even as they are known by God himself.
The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord: And the Blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you, and remain with you always. Amen.
For more details, read “Worship without Dumbing-down” by
The Rev. Dr. Peter Toon, M.A., D.Phil.
(Preservation Press
of the Prayer Book Society of the