God's Love for us

"To regard God's Love as a warm blanket wrapped around life as we like it, is a blasphemous reduction of God"

One of our very faithful parishioners made a request of me this week. He asked that I speak about God’s Love for us. So I will!

Actually, everything we say, sing, see and taste in the Church reveals God’s Love. In Church our ears hear: “For Thou art a good God and lovest mankind;” “The Lord is compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and of great goodness;” “Who hast so loved the world as to give Thine Only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” and many other such references. The icons teach us through our eyes that the eternal, invisible God became a human being for our salvation—died, rose from the dead and took our humanity back to God the Father, opening for us the gates of Paradise. In the Eucharist, we taste how really good He is, receiving with repentant joy what He left for us on the road to the Cross.

No one attending the celebrations of the Church with their senses open could come away with any other conclusion than that God loves us. If we pay attention and participate, we will know this for sure.

But the Church also wants us to know the nature of God’s Love—how He loves us. Many today believe that godly love resembles a warm blanket, a shelf overflowing with goodies, constant satisfaction of our desires, speedy relief from our troubles, a winning lottery ticket, and a bevy of other “services” we think we deserve and should have on demand. This is why, when life gets sour, so many modern people think God doesn’t love them anymore. Isn’t He supposed to take care of these things?

Of course, Satan (who hates us!) is always ready to exploit this false view of God’s Love, and through it to completely separate us from God by prompting us to conclude that not only has He stopped loving us, but that He’s also being “unfair” to us.

The tragedy of such misguided thinking is that it doesn’t know God’s Love as it really is—the dynamic power of the transformation of the human person, not a blessing of the status quo. Such thinking is unable to see that the sour times of life are God-given learning experiences or wake-up calls; opportunities to trust ourselves less and trust Him more.

Then we also fail to see the purpose of life’s joys—that in our sinfulness, the loving God continues to care for us so that, experiencing His glory, we will conform our wills to His. In fact, every moment of life—in every encounter, in the ups and downs—God’s Love is teaching us that we must grow in His Likeness and be transformed—broken and rebuilt, cast down so that we may be lifted up and made new, made aware of the darkness so that we will seek and appreciate the Light.

To regard God’s Love as a warm blanket wrapped around life as we like it, is a blasphemous reduction of God. So let’s get real! Until very recently, Christians have known that GOD’S LOVE IS FIRE! God’s Love is a Fire that will either change us or consume us.

God’s Fire is compassionate in order to change us! His Fire is merciful in order to transform us! His becoming man made change possible! His Death and Resurrection changed our eternal futures! His Fire in the chalice—His Body and Blood—places His Fire within us in order to refine us! He preached repentance to change our sickness into wholeness! He commanded forgiveness in order to unburden us! He carried the “lost sheep” on His shoulder to move it back to the fold. He welcomed the Prodigal Son because by coming to his senses he had turned back to his first love. Jesus healed the lame and the blind and raised the dead to reveal the transforming Love He possesses in Himself. He sent the Holy Spirit to slay our fallen lives and lift us up to new Life—transformed in His Likeness.

Frederika Matthews-Green, a 21st century Orthodox writer, captures this ancient teaching in a recent essay: “The goal of knowing Christ is to be healed and transformed. It is to partake of the presence of Christ, to dwell ‘in Him.’ It is to take on His fire like a coal in the furnace... We are renewed by the renewal of our minds. This takes time. It includes the whole self, reason, emotion and body. It happens slowly, by immersion in the living faith... This life is a process of turning increasingly toward Christ, learning to bear that uncreated light, getting the impurities out of our lump of coal. We must grow stronger and learn to bear His fire.”

In her book, Growing in Christ,” Mother Raphaela of the Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery expresses this ancient teaching by describing God’s Love as a Fire “which burns out all that is impure and imperfect in each of us.”

This is what it means to experience God’s Love. It is not a warm blanket. It is much, much, so much more than a tender embrace. With our cooperation, it roots out the evil in us because this Love, desiring to dwell in us, cannot coexist with its opposite.

The extraordinary thing is that throughout history, most of mankind has been responding to this transforming Love with the damning words: “Who? Me? Change?” Pride enters the picture, rejecting any notion that personal change is even necessary, “except in that person over there,” we say. Refusing to change, we also refuse God’s burning, transforming Love!

Let us realize that everything in salvation history is for and about human transformation. Everything in the Church is for and about human transformation in God’s Likeness. Every burning ounce of God’s fiery Love is about returning His creation, including humanity, to its original beauty. Those who are humble allow the Fire to cleanse them, to grow in His Likeness, and begin their ascent to the Kingdom, while the prideful get angry, dig-in, conform themselves to the image of the world and begin their descent into Hell. Both in response to the very same Love of God.

As Mother Raphaela describes: “In fact, if we really do not want the fullness of life and love, the presence of God and the fire of His love... will become for us the fire of hell.”

Matthews-Green puts it this way: “Those who have turned to Christ and prepared themselves in this life will experience that river of fire as light, warmth and life... Those who have not accepted Christ will experience His presence as burning and darkness and gnashing of teeth. All the misery of this life and the next is due to not knowing Christ.”

Seeking God’s Love, let us realize what it is and what it seeks to accomplish in us. Let us learn from this ancient prayer before Holy Communion: “Behold, I draw near to the Divine Communion. Burn me not as I partake, O Creator, for Thou art a Fire which burns the unworthy. Rather cleanse me of all defilement.”