"Emmanuel: Glimpses of God Incarnate," December 21

Tuesday, December 21

1 John 4:7-8

“God is Love”

THESE VERSES ARE BOTH AN ASSURANCE AND AN INDICTMENT. The assurance is in the character of God. God loves. If we love, it is because God’s love flows through us. Loving others is the knowledge of God.

The indictment is the opposite: If we do not love, we do not know God. Our words don’t matter. Our tenets of belief are beside the point. If we do not love others, we are estranged from God.

But love is not so simple. It rarely is the case that we love or we don’t love. Our love is all mixed up. We love some people, but some we do not. We can be deeply in love one day, and infuriated the next. Sometimes we simply don’t care about someone. Sometimes we hate.

This means that at times we know God, and at other times we do not. Our love is not constant. It varies, and our knowledge of God varies with it. If we choose indifference, or if we choose hate, we turn our backs on the God we claim to know.

When I was in college, the novel Love Story appeared on the bestsellers’ list. It was quickly followed by a movie and then a hit song. In the novel (and the movie) one of the principal characters said, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That is nonsense. Our loving is so variable, and can be so hurtful, that we often must apologize. Our thoughtlessness, our anger, our jealousies, our carelessness wound those we love. We often must say that we are sorry. We probably do not say it often enough.

We must also say it to God. Our failures of love are sinful and we must repent. These are the times when we most need the assurance that God is love. Our repentance, difficult as it can be, is not futile. God’s love comes to us as forgiveness. Our hearts often condemn us, and we writhe in shame and remorse. But the author of this letter assures us: God is greater than our hearts.

– Rev. Dr. David W. Johnson, Associate Professor of Church History and Christian Spirituality