A Monumental Saying:
Perhaps the greatest words ever written by anyone anywhere at any point in history were the words written by a one-time humble fisherman so many years ago. Whenever the Apostle John penned the tiny little saying, "God is love," his words triggered a ripple effect forever in the way notions of the Divine and God can be perceived. That short little saying has permanently changed the way that people can and should think about God and humanity.
Even though this short little saying may sound like nothing but fluff and even though it seems like this little saying couldn't contain the very depths of reality within it, the Church throughout the ages has declared and proven otherwise. This little saying, "God is love," is so massive because it implies that God exists as a communion; as a network of relationships in and of Himself. How can we say something like this? Because love requires communion, it requires a relationship for it to even exist to begin with. For love to take place, more than one person must be present. For, love is something that is only shared between persons. Where only one person is present, love cannot be. Again, love requires communion, it requires relationships. In fact, it is more precise to say that love actually is communion. Love is relationship. Whenever it comes to God, the Church has always understood this communion that God is as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Oppositions:
Throughout the centuries, there have been occasional flurries of uprisings seeking to reject this notion. People have wished to deny this reality; that God exists as communion, as Trinity.
Some have wished to view God purely as a "monad" so to speak. They have wished to view Him as a God who is only one and not one and three simultaneously. Thus, in referring to John's little saying, they claim that God simply loves Himself in His monadic state and the claim is that John means nothing more than this. Essentially, their view is that God is self-centered and self-oriented and that He loves Himself alone and above all else. While there are many, many horrendous problems with such a notion, we will only focus on one for time being.
The Apostle John used the Greek word "agape" for "love" in his little saying. Agape is a word, a type of love, that is completely other-oriented. It is wholly focused upon the benefit of another. The saying of Christ elaborates on what agape is quite well: that, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." It is selfless love that gives itself away with no strings attached. This being the case, the "monad" position is entirely illegitimate since the god that it promotes would have to be the exact opposite of agape in any real sense. A god who loves himself above all else cannot be agape.
Part of the tragedy of this position is that whatever you claim about God you are also claiming about humankind to a certain extent because humankind is "made in God's image." Thus, if God is a selfish and ultimately self-loving being...what would that make us in turn? In order to live up to God's image, then, we would have to also be selfish and self-loving beings. Self-love would be our calling.
There is another group who claims that whenever John says that, "God is love," he simply means that God loves us. For them, John's saying means nothing more than this. "We already know that God loves us, so it would be foolish to try to read anything else into John's words," is their claim. Their notion is that this phrase is solely talking about God's attitude and action towards humanity. In other words, "God is love," is synonymous with "God loves us." While the idea that God loves us is certainly true, to attribute the love of God to us in this saying poses several problems as well.
It is very important to point out the fact that John is talking about something that God is, not simply something that God does. God is not just doing love...God is love. John is positing the origin of God's love to God Himself, not to the relationship that He has with us.
In other words, if "God is love" only describes God's love for us, it would mean that God would need us in order to be something; in order to be love. God could not, then, be love without us. It would mean that He ultimately needs us in order to be. To put it bluntly: if God needs us or anything else then He is not God because His being would be reliant upon something outside of Himself. Need belongs to the created realm and created things and beings, not to the Uncreated. This would also mean that God hasn't always been love but that He became love. It would mean that He became love whenever He created us. Again, this would mean that His being was ultimately changed and this, again, would make Him not God. Ontological change belongs to the created, not to the Uncreated.
The consequence of such a view for us again would be utterly tragic. It would mean that we are worshipping a God who could do nothing to remedy our fallen world and our devastatingly broken situation. It would mean that He could not conquer death; that He could not overcome nature because, according to this line of thought, God would actually be subject to the very things that we are. God's love for us, then, would not actually be real or life changing because He ultimately has no power to love because He would ultimately need us in order to carry out such an action. It would make God subject to love, not the Giver of it. In other words and to put it most simply: God would be subject to something greater than Himself.
No, God Really Is Communion
Now, we can come back to John's actual meaning by his short little phrase. Whenever John wrote the words, "God is love," he meant that God has revealed Himself as a communion, as the Holy and Divine Trinity. His being is literally communion. The phrase describes the dynamics of the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is descriptive of the love that they share in their Triune communion. They give to one another and are defined by one another. The Father is not the Father first and foremost because He is a Father to us. No, He is the Father because He eternally is in relation to the Son. He is called "Father" because He is Father to the Son and the Son is called "Son" because of His eternal relationship with the Father. The Son has always been the Son to the Father. The Father, then, only becomes the Father to us through the Son ("no one can come to the Father except through me..."). This is the exact reason why Jesus is the only Way to salvation. It is only through Jesus (the Son) that we come to know the Father and that the Father comes to be known as "Abba" to us.
Image Bearers in the Church Today:
Again, whatever we say about God we are also saying about ourselves to a certain extent because we are made in His image. In coming to grips with the notion of God's eternal existence as Trinity, as communion, we come to gain more of an understanding of how we are wired and how life becomes fulfilling for us. We quickly understand that, if God is a communal being then we, to, are made for and are defined ultimately by communion. If God is love then we are also made for love. Love would not be a secondary thing for us, then. It would be the defining element of our very existence. As we read the Scriptures, we can see very quickly the emphasis that is placed on this line of thought. Genesis 1 and 2 is a very good place to start because it is in chapter 1 that we read about how we are made in God's image.
In chapter 2, as God set out to create Adam, what did He actually say? "Let us create humanity in our image and likeness." Why would God speak to Himself as "us"? Because He is an us. God was setting out to create humankind in His Triune image.
Furthermore, what did God say after He created Adam? He made Adam and saw all of the other works of His hands and said, "It is not good for man to be alone." All throughout the creation writings God made things and stated that they were "good." In fact, after He wrapped up all of His work He even said that everything was "very good." The only time in the whole of the creation account where something was perceived as "not good" was in terms of Adam's loneliness. What would not be good would be a single human being. Why is this the case? Why was it not good (and still not good) for man to be alone? Because God is not alone in and of Himself and we are made in His image.
For humankind to adequately reflect God's image, there needs to be more than one of us and there needs to be more than one gender. There needs to be more than one person because God exists as more than one person. Thus, it is not good for man to be alone because a lone man cannot reflect the image of God and fulfill what he is created for.
The Church Needs to Reexamine How She Relates to People:
It has often been taught or assumed that human beings are primarily thinking creatures. This means that it is the human person's ability to be rational that sets them apart from the rest of the created realm and the animal kingdom. However, if we are truly created in the image of a God who is communion, it would mean that we are not primarily thinking beings but that we are primarily lovers, as God is love. To promote a notion that the human person is primarily a rational being and is ultimately defined by his or her rationality would be very deceiving and this view throughout history has led to some rather tragic places and has hampered the Church for far too long.
Within the Church, whenever this idea is promoted, people and church leaders begin viewing the mind (viewed in a purely intellectual and rationalistic sense) as a funnel through which human action and response is initiated. This is why so much stress has been placed upon "doctrine" (in the purely Scholastic sense) and confessions off and on throughout the course of church history. My aim here is not to demean confessions or doctrine because I truly believe both to be important and, to a degree, necessary. However, there is a difference between upholding our doctrines and confessions and viewing people primarily as doctrinal and confessional creatures. Whenever we only aim at the heads of people in academic sorts of ways, we truly miss their humanness and fail to interact with them in human ways.
Furthermore, it should be evident enough in our day that, just because somebody knows something rationally, this doesn't mean that this will lead to "proper" action. Plenty of people know that eating fast food is terrible for them. Yet, what do they do? Plenty of people know that exercise is good for them. Yet, what do they not do? Likewise, we are not experiencing the present crises within Western Christendom because of a lack of "knowing" the right things. That is not the dilemma. There are plenty of people in the pews who "know" enough and who value their doctrines and confessions deeply. The issue is that too few people emanate the love of Christ in deep and real ways. Is this not the issue?
As God is...So are We...
Whenever we wrestle with an understanding that we are made in the image of the Triune God, we understand, then, that we are not primarily thinking beings. To be a thinking "thing" is not what it means to be made in the image of God. We are primarily lovers. We are primarily built for relationship the Way that the members of the Trinity relate to one another.
Coming back to the Scriptures, we can now see the Greatest Commandment in a whole new light. Whenever Jesus was asked which commandment in all of the Law was the greatest that God had ever given, He responded by saying:
"Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul and with all of your mind. This is the first and the greatest commandment. The second is like it; love your neighbor as yourself. All of the Law and all of the prophets hang upon these two commandments"
To put it simply, Jesus did not say that the greatest commandment was to know our confessions, our doctrines or even our Bibles in adequate rationalistic ways. He did not say that the Greatest Command was to believe in the right things in an intellectual and academic sort of way. What is the two-fold command? Love. He said that the greatest commandment is love: love God with all that you are and love your neighbor as yourself. Again, it is love/communion that we are made for. To bear the image of God is to reflect the love that God is in and of Himself. To love is to love as the Father loves the Son, the Son the Father and the Spirit to and from both.
Human beings are made for love. We are made to give it, receive it and be defined by it. We were made to reflect the God who is love in our relationships with others.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be :
world without end. Amen.
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