God is love and love is God
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So if God is love and we are created in the image of God, we need to understand that we are creatures of love. That means that we can and must be intentionally loving in this world in order to be partners with God in blessing and enriching and improving life on earth.So that’s the first piece of this theological reality. God is love, we are created in his image, and we are also loving creatures.
The second theological point has to do with religious life as we see it in Old Testament times. The religious community, the Israelites, the Jewish people, were overwhelmed with religious activities, which were all about sacrifices, rituals, offerings, rules and laws related to their sinfulness, and were tied to their desperate need to be right with God—to have their sins forgiven, to be obedient children of the Lord. And it was mostly about rules and laws and offerings and sacrifices related to their sinfulness.
Now let’s jump ahead hundreds of years to Jesus. Early in Jesus’ ministry , He spoke to the people around him, some of whom were his chosen disciples, many of whom were just interested, curious people. He looked at them and said to them, “You are the light of the world.” What is amazing about that description or announcement is that it apparently applied to everybody who heard him (and I think it applies to everybody, everywhere, to this day). In other words Jesus was telling us that we have something to do right here, right now, and everybody can, and must be, partners in that.
A little while later, when Jesus was teaching his disciples to pray, he created what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Among the sentences are these words, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What is so amazing about that sentence is that it connects in our thinking with God’s promise generations earlier to lead the people to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the promised land. We easily relegate that thought either to a lost promise in the Old Testament, or more likely, we have identified those thoughts as having something to do with going to heaven.
For hundreds of years and for millions of people, it has been believed that heaven, a joyous perfect afterlife, is what Jesus came to guarantee. But when we ponder these words of Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer and when we connect them with Jesus naming them and us as the light of the world, a fresh wonderful reality comes before us. It is this-the good Lord God/Jesus intends for us to make this world a beautiful place. His agenda and ours is not exclusively about getting people to heaven after death; it is about making this world a land flowing with milk and honey.
Now let’s jump to Jesus’ death on the cross. The most powerful words that he said were world changing words. When breathing his last, he said, “It is finished.”
What that means is that the enormous efforts and activity of the people of God in that day and ever after (whereby they sacrificed animals they kept incredible detailed rules and laws in order to deal with their sinfulness) were finished. That is the essence of Jesus’ death on the cross and those words that he said he spoke: “It is finished.”
What we have learned then is that we have another agenda. We are not to be preoccupied with sacrifices, rituals and rules concerning our sins.
Instead, we are called to work hard at loving one another. Our agenda is that promise of God for this life—namely, a land flowing with milk and honey, the promised land. He intends this for us NOW, here on earth — not something we have to wait until we die to enjoy.
Yes, heaven is our destiny, but our preoccupation with living for Jesus starts with showing people God’s goodness. It is living in such a way that people experience love in whatever form it might take: that we communicate directly, indirectly, personally, professionally or any other way the presence of love in this world. Because love is God and God is love.
Here is another text that is so wonderfully relevant and yet easily misunderstood. Jesus said “If you lose your life for my sake you will find it.” That sounds overwhelmingly beyond us. But it is possible.
Think of it this way: Any time we pause, or interrupt our personal business; any time we step out of our own preoccupations and busyness to encourage, appreciate, assist, show love, or any other expression of interest and concern, that is dying for another person.
Granted, it is a long ways from Jesus’ dying on the cross, but it is part of Jesus’ kind of love, and it is a form of dying for another person. I believe that it is of the same species. St. Paul put it this way, “We are children of God and, if children, then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him.” And another version of what Jesus said is this, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
So there we have it! God is love and love is God. And we are conduits of God’s love. As weak and lacking in confidence as we may be, we are called to be the light of the world because in giving love, we give God, we give Jesus to people.
It is much more possible and probable that people who start to experience lovingkindness, compassion, conscientiousness, care and concern from Christians will gain an appreciation of the love of Jesus and celebrate his love for them.
They will both enjoy this life in a greater way and be open to the loveliness of a heavenly destiny after they die.
