1 john 48/11/2023 Although God’s love is without conditions, it is not without consequences: God commands us to love one another as God has loved us. If we have come to know God’s love, we have seen for ourselves that it is unearned, undeserved, utterly free. How can we possibly love God while we hate God’s beloved? Seeing ourselves as God’s beloved means seeing our sisters and brothers as God’s loved ones too. To know God’s love is to overflow with God’s love. Such life-giving love is too wonderful to keep to ourselves. Upheld, surrounded, enfolded by such love, who could be afraid? God embraces us as we are, loves us as we are, and works in us to make us clean and whole and new. Nothing in us is so broken or so filthy that God is unwilling or unable to touch it. When we open ourselves to the warmth and light of God’s presence, we find that even our deepest, darkest secrets and the ugliest parts of ourselves are not beyond God’s reach. And honestly, who could ever deserve such amazing, immeasurable love?ġ John insists that the more fully and completely we know God, the more the immense reality of God’s love dawns on us. No, God showers love on us whether we deserve it or not. We don’t have to measure up to some standard in order to be lovable. We don’t have to clean up our act before God can love us. We don’t have to reach out to God or even believe in God in order to be loved. God’s love does not depend on our initiative or on our worthiness. God’s love is a truth more basic and reliable than the ground we walk on and the air we breathe. If ever we should question whether God truly does love us, the gift and witness of the Holy Spirit confirmed it once more: we are God’s beloved. God continues to show us love through Jesus’ life-giving presence among us. God made love real and present by sending Jesus to live among us and to die for us. God loves as the sun shines: love expresses who God is.ġ John emphasizes that God’s love is not some abstract concept. God is the source and the definition of love. In case we ever forget this basic, essential fact of our faith, 1 John makes it crystal clear.
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