On the front page of this month’s Wellington City Corps newsletter I feature an article which I’ve adapted slightly from the Grace Seattle Blog written by John Haralson back in December 2015.
He says; A very wise person once summarized the Bible’s entire story using love as the major thread that holds everything together. The idea wasn’t original to him, as he was doing his best to channel the theology of Augustine. Here is a paraphrase of the biblical story;
In the beginning, there was love. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existed as a loving community of mutual delight and self-giving. God made the heavens and the earth as an act of love. All of God’s creation participates in God’s love.
Human beings have been made by God to consciously, willingly, and worshipfully participate in the love of God. Yet, human beings have sinned. We have chosen other loves instead of the love of God and love of neighbour.
Because of this, our loves have become disordered – we have an inability to love the right things and are instead consumed by inordinate love of lesser things. Yet, God, who is love, has intervened.
In love, he sent his Son into the world to rescue us. This rescue involves the forgiveness of our sins; but it goes significantly beyond that.
God also has lovingly given his people his Spirit so that we might be re-made into his image. The over-arching goal of God re-creating us in his image through Jesus Christ is so that we might, once again, become lovers – lovers of God and lovers of our neighbour. In this way, God’s salvation is best understood as the triumph of love over sin and death.
I think this is a faithful and fruitful way to understand the story God speaks to us in Scripture. The implication of this story is that God now stands before us and is inviting us into this story of love.
He is inviting us to be known and lovingly embraced by him. He is also inviting us to begin to move towards others in our lives in love.
In other words, love is now possible.
So as we interact in the coming days weeks, and months may we keep this front and centre in our lives.
As people will judge us as Christians by how we interact with one another, with others and our community, not only through what we say but also through what we do.
May we each be an example of what it means to truly love one another in these testing and uncertain times – for by our acts of love people will know that we are His disciples (refer to John 13:35)
Check out the full newsletter here.
‘Til next time, blessings 🙂
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