I have been spending some time in a book by Nick Vasiliades, loved (period). Here’s a quote from chapter 4:
If there were something you could do (or avoid doing) to increase (or decrease) His love and approval for you, that would make you in control of God. Absurd right? You do not control His love for you because that would require controlling not just His love but God Himself, for God is love. Remember, He doesn’t have love. He is love. We can take great comfort and rejoice at our inability to move the needle of His love for us. It’s always set on maximum—even on your worst days, filled with the greatest failure. Accept that fact. Stand on it. Believe it. And when your mind is being assailed with thoughts that would speak otherwise of His love, fight the good fight of faith. Believe it anyway. Preach the love of God to yourself if necessary.
God is love. Glory, you know, is the manifestation of the essence of someone or something. When the apostle John says, “we beheld his [Jesus’s] glory” he is referring to the fact that in Jesus the life of the Father was on display. If God is love, and if in the earthly life of Jesus the essence of God was on exhibition, then in Jesus his followers saw God’s love. That is, they saw in Jesus that God is love, because the Father with His love lived in the man Jesus. After Pentecost, it was possible for his disciples to see Jesus in each other, because by then they had received his indwelling life.
My point is that in Jesus the Father’s love was on display. People could behold in him all of those features of love that the apostle Paul famously mentions in 1 Corinthians 13. And Jesus told his closest followers, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” One characteristic of love that is not mentioned explicitly in the list that Paul gave to the Corinthians: love holds everything together. This comes out of Colossians 1:15-20, a passage in which Paul is straining to present the all-encompassing greatness of Jesus Christ. Love is the attracting force that brings about unity—the unity that Jesus prayed would exist among his followers (John 17) after he introduced them to the necessity of loving one another (John 13 and 15).
We see in the world around us that where love is not, things fall apart and people separate. We also see Jesus sitting on the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem. He had just predicted the destruction of the temple. His disciples gathered to him. As they did so they asked him a multifaceted question that he began to answer in Matthew 24:4-14:
See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
This passage begins with groups of people, nations and kingdoms, divided against and in conflict with each other. It continues among believers, in some of whom love grows cold. False teachers, schisms, betrayal, hatred. It ends with the one who endures. Jesus is the Enduring One, and he draws a new humanity to salvation. Because he has risen, we are in him and he is in us. Because we are in him, we too can endure to the end. Because he is in us, we can love one another.
A final point: as the love of Jesus plays out in our lives there may be times when he adopts the posture of an opponent. Remember Peter in the resurrection, asked repeatedly by the Lord whether he loved Him. Peter was grieved, but he didn’t leave. It brings to mind the words that close Paul Simon’s song, The Boxer.
In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him
‘Til he cried out in his anger and his shame
I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains.
We can feel that way during Jesus’s dealings with us. However, the Christ whose loves envelopes us, and the love of the Christ who indwells us, maintain their connection.
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