If I were to ask you the meaning of these words, I don’t know if you would be able to tell me? We have repeated or heard them so often that these have become as common as saying: ‘good morning’. If you take a panel of one hundred people, Christian or not, old or young, you may well end up with a hundred possible explanations for this simple phrase: GOD is love.
About twenty years ago, a pastor justified the merits of homosexuality on French TV quoting 1Jn 4:7-8: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” According to him, two people in love were the exemplification of the love of GOD, irrespective of their gender. Some Christians on the show were pretty shocked by his interpretation of the Scripture: they obviously did not share the same views on love. This is why, at the start, I asked if you could really explain to me, that is, help me understand what it means to say that GOD is love?
If I say: ‘snow white’, rice, trousers or police, these words call the same thing to all our minds. It is true that there are different kinds of rice and trousers, but the general idea is the same for everybody. But when it comes to love in general and GOD’s love in particular, people’s understanding can be at miles from each other. It is a bit like when we say: GOD is great. The understanding of His greatness is not the same for a five year old child and an adult (natural or spiritual).
As for me, I thought I knew and could explain “GOD is love.” But after spending more than a week pondering over it, I have come to realise that I was incapable of understanding it. Let me explain.
Imagine that I hear about a lost tribe in a far away Chinese or Amazonian village while watching the TV; a village with no gas, electricity, running water and, of course, no telephone or internet connection. Imagine that all of a sudden, my heart starts beating for these people to the point that I decide to leave my country, family, and comfort to go there and once there, I am often laughed at, unwelcomed and misunderstood. One day, as I am going to the village square, I find out that its most notorious criminal has finally been arrested and is about to be executed. He has committed the worse possible atrocities which you are free to imagine. The firing squad is ready to shoot. His parents are crying. His widow is desperate. His children are terrorised. The crowd is bloodthirsty and demands swift justice. I come forward and ask to take his place. Something is moving me so much that I want to offer him a second chance, a new life with his loved ones. Over and over again, the soldiers ask me to repeat what I have just said. They ask whether I really understand the implications of my request: I will never see my family and country again. Just yesterday, this vile guy showered me with insults. He even threatened to slit my throat. Do I really want to save such a person and take his place? They check that I am sane and not suicidal and conclude that I am in full possession of my senses. They ask the prisoner if he is willing to exchange his place. Of course, he is! He looks at me, dumbfounded, his mouth wide open, but accepts. They release him. I now move forward to take his place and die, my heart full of something pure, deep, burning and powerful for him. I know that he may never be grateful. I know he might even go back to his old vicious life, rendering my death and sacrifice vain. I know that this village might never understand the reason for my gesture and why I left everything to come to them and die so disgracefully. Nevertheless, I still give my life for this man… And Jesus did far more than this for each and every one of us.
These are the thoughts that have recently flooded my mind while I was meditating on the love of GOD manifested in Christ Jesus. This is how I understood that I could neither comprehend, nor explain it. Just like this criminal, I can accept and receive it, but it is a love that transcends everything that a human mind can grasp or conceive (Is 55:8-9). I can do what I have just described and I do not know if someone other than Christ Jesus can do it. However, if nobody else can, then nobody else truly understands this way of loving.
GOD is love: Yes! I accept it by faith, knowing that I will finally understand it one day. He is Almighty: Yes! But am I even capable of imagining ALL that His power epitomises?
Have a great meditative week.
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