I recently had a brief conversation with my nurse practitioner about church. I mentioned I knew a church in the area where she grew up. She replied that she was Catholic growing up but would now be Unitarian if anything. She then explained, 'I just believe in loving everyone.'
I have thought about this
brief exchange for the past few days as it is full of interesting points.
First, she implied that churches with commitments to doctrine or ethics are not
as loving. Second, the exchange begged the question, 'What is
love?' Her version of love is, undoubtedly, a product of a relativistic
worldview that values toleration, acceptance, and diversity. It might be
called, 'permissive love.' For her, permissive love is the highest
version of love. Third, her concept of love did not need God but was
humanist. We should love one another unconditionally and, if there is a
god, then that god's love needs to look like our permissive love.
So, what kind of love do
we hold up against this onslaught of our Christian faith? First, God's
love revealed in Exodus 34 to Moses is not a permissive love but a
longsuffering, 'steadfast love' that does not deny certain acts are sinful in
order to be openly accepting. It is a love that will 'by no means clear
the guilty (v. 7). In its steadfastness, it remains faithful to the
relation with the sinner, not tolerating sin but holding on despite sin.
Furthermore, it is a forgiving love. Forgiveness is not tolerance, let
alone acceptance. It affirms that wrong has been committed but still
holds the relationship to be worth saving. It calls the sinner to
acknowledge his or her sin, to repent, show contrition, and change.
Steadfast love is the commitment one makes to a relationship.
In the New Testament, we
learn of an even deeper level to God's love. It is sacrificial. The
well-known passage in John 3.16 says this clearly. The background to this
verse is John 1.10-11, where Jesus is pictured as the light of the world that
came into the world but was not known by the world. He came to His own,
but they did not receive Him. Then, in John 3.16, we read about God's
love for the world that was costly. Permissive love costs nothing.
It requires no suffering. It is simply, 'live and let live.' But the
verse says, 'God loved the world in this way: He gave His only begotten son, so
that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but have eternal life' (my
translation). God's love is not only suffering love but also giving
love. It only requires a relationship, a response of trust in God.
Permissive love does not need a relationship at all: what the other thinks,
does, or feels is irrelevant. God's love, on the other hand, offers the
deepest possible relationship with God Himself, and the greatest gift of
salvation from sin and death and of eternal life.
Paul captures this
suffering, gift-bearing love of God in Romans 5 when he emphasises that it
results in being reconciled to God. He says,
For
one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person
one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we
were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been
justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of
God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of
his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received reconciliation (Romans 5.7-11).
In his first epistle,
John returned to the theme of God's love in talking about how we know
God. He wrote,
9
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son
into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that
we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another
(1 John 4.9-11).
We have an image of this
love of God in childbirth. Before the child is even born, the mother is
in pain for him or her. Before the child knows his or her parents and
other family, he or she is already loved. Just so God's costly love comes
to us, offering us new life in Him before we ever knew Him.
Permissive love is all
that our relativistic culture asks. It turns out to be such a shallow
love--really no love at all in that a relationship is not even necessary.
God's love is steadfast, longsuffering, forgiving, costly, and reconciling.
His love comes to us through Jesus Christ, who died for our sins on the cross
in our place that we should not have to endure the guilt and punishment for our
own sins but instead be reconciled to God. As Charles Wesley wrote,
'Amazing love! How can it be, that Thou my God should die for me!'
Only the Christian faith offers such love, such costly love, because only the
Christian faith declares that Jesus is the love of God piercing our darkness
with heavenly light, cleansing our sin through His own death for us, and restoring
us to right relationship with Him. In a culture that wants only
toleration and acceptance, God offers so much more in His costly love. In
a culture that celebrates sinful ways that are contrary to God's purposes in
creation and His standards in relationships, God offers so much more in His
restoration to righteousness and reconciliation to Himself. Oh, the
costly love of God!