The Lord is here; his kingdom has come. (Part 14)

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 14: It is God as a person with whom we are in relationship that we are in love with

This is a great challenge -especially to Christians like me who revel so much in their experience of God’s presence. Our faith must not simply be a personal comfort blanket, a way of providing emotional and spiritual fulfilment, a mechanism for coping with personal anxieties, weaknesses and mistakes. The Lord is here! His mission is to launch and establish the kingdom of God. Our task is to take up this mission and make it our own.

So, where the Lord is, there is his kingdom. So, the two elements we are considering: “The Lord is here”, and “The kingdom has come” are two sides of the same coin. We must begin with the experience that the Lord is with us because this is the spring out of which the coming of the kingdom flows. I have some sympathy for secularists who may want to declare that wherever love is, there is “the kingdom” – though we must expect them to translate the term “kingdom” into something like, “the prefect, fulfilled society”. I am not against the triumph of love, forgiveness, transformation etc! As Jesus said, “Whoever is not against us is for us”. However, I remain wary of saying that the two approaches are interchangeable. When Christians say, “God is love”, they do not simply mean that, “Love is the ultimate value”. Christians sometimes annoy atheists by claiming that every time one of them acts in a loving manner that this is, in fact, God at work. Not even God has the monopoly on love. Though it is a fine point – I see why Christians make the claim. However, my particular emphasis is that, if we human beings simply rely on acting in a loving manner, then we are acting in an entirely human way, but I have said that human nature is inadequate. It is only through our relationship with God that we make contact with his love. Even more than this, we are making contact with him. God is not simply love. This is tricky to explain clearly, but I will try. If we say, “God is love” we are saying something that is true, for the very essence of God is love – but that does not mean that the words “God” and “love” are interchangeable. “God is God”. That is the ultimate truth. Turning it into a more devotional form, I am coming to the view that the only thing that matters, and the essence of all prayer, is simply to declare, “The Lord is Lord”. All other words are simply clarifying for our own benefit the implications of the one over-arching truth that, “The Lord is Lord”. So, when we come to faith by recognising that the Lord is here we do not just make contact with love – supremely wonderful as that is. It is not even that we learn a new and better quality of love from God – though that is also of supreme importance. The crucial point is that we make contact with the person of God – and it is out of that relationship that everything else flows – including the channelling of love into the world.