The Lord is here; his kingdom has come. (Part 15)

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 15: It is the love of God that transforms us

We have not fully expressed the transformative effect of God’s love. It is only as we open ourselves to the love of God that we see a new way to live – for ourselves, and in relationship with others. We see new possibilities for human society, and we receive the wisdom and energy to work towards them. We love because God in Christ first loved us, and it is as we receive love from God that we are enabled to become channels of his love to others. This is also true for all the other gifts that God gives us. Evolution taught humankind to be selfish, but as social animals it also taught us to co-operate and of the value of altruism. Yet the nature of Christian love is of a completely different order – and the ancient Greeks had a word for it: “agape”. Clearly then, it is not an invention of Christianity, but it is Christian faith that has taken agape to be the fundamental essence of God, and proclaimed that humanity should live out this kind of love if we wish to be in communion with God.

Clearly, the experience of the presence of God that leads a believer to say, “The Lord is here”, is the foundation for being in communion with God; hence the inescapability of beginning with the personal relationship with God as the way of transforming the world into God’s kingdom. So, in natural human terms, we might love someone because of a close family relationship, as a friend whose qualities and company we enjoy, or because of sexual attraction. In a variety of ways, the person has “earned” our love; we love them because they are lovely. However, agape love is an entirely selfless love – it is given not with the hope of receiving something back in return for our love; it is love given solely because the person needs our love. It is an entirely altruistic love that wants nothing but the well-being of the other. It is love given because the nature of God is to love, and those who believe in him try (desperately, pathetically, but also sometimes gloriously) to love others as God loves us. It is precisely because Christian love is this kind of love that enables Christianity to be so focussed on compassion, forgiveness and new chances. Very often our – completely sound – human judgement is that a person does not deserve compassion, forgiveness or new chances. What they deserve is condemnation and judgement for their wickedness – and in other societies this might lead to many forms of punishment, including capital punishment. However, the ultimate solution to human evil is for the person to repent and live a new kind of life. Coercing people into goodness, or, at least, restraining evil, is beneficial for society, but is not extracting the root of the problem, or healing and renewing the person. The only way to do this is through the transformative effect of embracing the love of God. When the burden of our guilt is too great for us ever to make amends, when we are so trapped by our habits of weakness, when we are incapable of achieving the good we approve of, or have lost touch with qualities of goodness, truth and justice entirely, then only the amnesty of forgiveness that God declares in Christ can heal our wounds sufficiently to actually give us a realistic chance of a new life.