God is love,
and those who abide in love
abide in God,
and God abides in them.
At the end
of the Gospel according to John there is a section which states:
But these
are written so that you may come to believe that
Jesus is
the Messiah,
the Son of
God,
and that
through believing you may have life in his name.
The purpose
of the gospel is to tell people about Jesus, so that they will believe. By
hearing or reading the Gospel, they will understand, and feel, that he is the
Son of God, and because he is the Son of God, it is a good idea to follow him
and live and love according to his way.
The first
letter of John has a different purpose.
It is
written for people who have accepted the Jesus as Son of God idea.
It is
written for people who are following Jesus.
It is
written as a kind of set of proofs or “how to’s”
It is like a
users manual of Christianity.
Kind of.
The
wonderful section today is such a section.
This
magnificent writing that slowly spirals around,
gradually
removing words and adding new ones,
that ever so slightly, but significantly
deepen the meaning.
The spiral
reaches points that are no more definable or alterable.
They are so
pure and perfected that they have to be left as they are.
God is love,
and those who
abide in love
abide in God,
and God
abides in them.
It is a
perfected sentence. It is beyond refining.
It is dense
in its collected meaning from all that has gone before.
It is
resonant in experience and wisdom.
It is filled
with truth and depth.
God is love
and those who
abide in love
abide in God
and God
abides in
them
As God is
love, so where love is, God is,
and the
permanence of love in us
means that
we are permanently dwelling in God
and God in
us.
This
presence of love is proof of the presence of the Spirit of God,
and the
presence of the Spirit
is the
guarantee of the mutual indwelling of God and us.
This is the
meaning.
Union with
God.
The letter
expresses this in terms of mutual indwelling.
God in us,
and us in God.
God is Love.
Love can
come from no where else, other than God.
Not only is
God the source of all love, he is love itself.
Anyone who
really loves, is of God, and knows God.
On the other
hand,
as God’s
very being is love,
someone who
is loveless or selfish shows they do not know God.
It might pay
to pause there for a moment.
Our
selfishness,
nastiness, and jealousy,
our
pettiness,
our need to
always be right,
our self
absorption,
our ego
driven need for recognition
are all
signs that we are missing the point about God.
They show
the parts of our hearts that God doesn’t get a look into.
God does not
abide in such thoughts, feelings, and actions.
When we act,
think or feel in such a way,
we are
pushing God out of the way.
These are
acts, thoughts and feelings that we own and they come from us.
Love is
different.
Love doesn’t
belong to human nature.
It doesn’t
start from our side toward God.
It is the
other way. God started it.
He sent his
son to reconcile us to himself by the sacrifice of his life.
The love of
God
incarnate in
Jesus
has to become
incarnate in
Christians,
and love
which is received
in and with
divine life,
must like
that life
be active.
In God we
see love as the sacrifice of self for humanity.
It is that
sense of sacrifice and giving of self
to our
fellow brother and sisters that we need to follow.
God is
love,
and those
who abide
in love
abide in God
and God
abides
in them.
Over the
past few weeks, a group of us have been exploring the work of Julian of
Norwich. She had many things to say about God’s love. Her whole understanding
of God could be reduced to God is love.
After
receiving her visions, and contemplating, meditating and praying upon their
meaning, she wrote:
I desired in many
ways to know what was our Lord's meaning.
And fifteen years
after and more, I was answered in spiritual understanding, and it was said:
What, do you wish to
know your Lord's meaning in this thing?
Know it well, love
was his meaning.
Who reveals it to
you? Love.
What did he reveal to
you? Love.
Why does he reveal it
to you? For love.
Remain in this, and
you will know more of the same.
But you will never
know different, without end.
Love was his
meaning.
God
is love,
and those who abide
in love
abide in
God,
and God
abides in
them.
