God’s love is not the toleration, acceptance, welcoming, or inclusion of my ‘otherness’. It is not the celebration of my contribution to ‘diversity’. It is not God’s preferential treatment of those who are or claim to be victims, a rescuing of the already righteous.
Romans 5.1-11 explains God’s love as peace with Him through our Lord Jesus Christ, the granting of access to His grace, justification of the sinner by the blood of Christ, salvation from God’s wrath, and reconciliation to God by the death of His Son. God’s love recognises in us no worthiness, for we are deserving of His wrath. It is sacrificial, paying the penalty demanded by justice for the justification of the unjust. It is a conferring on the sinner with nothing to offer in his defense the verdict of ‘no condemnation’ and the gift of reconciliation to God.
Our Christian life begins in the waters of baptism with a recognition that our unrighteousness needs forgiveness and cleansing. In Christ’s death for our sins, we die to our sin. In Christ’s resurrection from the grave to life, we are raised to new life. Paul writes,
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (Romans 6.3-4).
God’s love treats us as sinners, not victims. It has nothing to do with God recognising in us some dignity, worthiness, or contribution that we bring into His presence or to the community. It is not exhausted in some vague virtue that can be found in various religions, such as in showing hospitality to strangers, giving alms to the needy, and showing grace to others. In these is some reflection of God’s love. Yet God’s love is so much more and something only stated in Christian teaching, that Christ died for sinners.
We know what it is like to feel compassion for the suffering and want justice for the victim. We might even call that love. Yet God’s love is proffered to the sinner while yet a sinner. Paul says, ‘God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5.8). How is this divine love? It is love for the sinner that removes the guilt of sin and transforms the sinful character of the sinner. Paul says, ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’ (Galatians 5.24).
To know God’s love is to understand Christ upon the cross. He did not hang on the cross to show to what lengths He would go, even to die, for another. That He did, but it is not why He died on the cross. He died for our sins: ‘He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 2.2). As Peter says, Jesus’ death was the payment of a ransom ‘with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot’ (1 Peter 1.18-19).
God’s love expressed in Jesus’ death on the cross reveals two things at once. It reveals our utter unworthiness and sinfulness before a holy God. Our state was such that only Christ’s death could save us. It simultaneously reveals God’s character in that His love is sacrificial love. As our sacrificial lamb, Christ is Himself pure and we are ourselves impure. Sacrificial love is love that forgives us our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1.9). God’s love is only fully revealed in the cross.
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