Fr Matthew Reese
“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. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins”
—1 John 4:9-10
Dear Friends in Christ,
Today’s second lesson at Morning Prayer is perhaps one of the most eminently quotable in all of the Epistles: “God is love.” Much has been made in recent years about this passage, not least by our esteemed, most recent Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry.
Our Triduum preacher, Fr Scott Gunn has written a book entitled The Way of Love. There’s an attendant curriculum from the Forward Movement. Bishop Curry has—in a true sign of the times—a whole podcast devoted to it!
And they’re not wrong to do so.
Truly, the message of Divine Love is so central to the Christian message that any theology that doesn’t deal with the nature—the boundless capacity—of God’s love isn’t truly Christian at all.
But I think Fr Gunn and Bishop Curry—and many of the other learned divines writing and teaching on this subject—would agree that our casual conception of God’s love is often rather impoverished.
“The Way of Love” is not some benign liberal platitude about getting along and being nice.
The recognition that God is love is, if we really consider it, a staggering, convicting, all-encompassing reality.
The love of God is totalizing. The love of God is self-sacrificial: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
As we read in the First Epistle of John today, the love of God not only convicts us, not only exhorts us, not only encourages us, the love of God abides in us. Today’s lesson reminds us that the true, selfless offering of our love is in fact a window into a different reality.
“No man has ever seen God,” John writes, but… to love is to experience God, to let God abide in us, and have his love perfected in us.
Yours in Christ,
—Fr Matthew
