The good of Good Friday 3: and love

~ John Simpson

Continuing from faith and hope to love in Thomas Aquinas’s list of perspectives from which we can see how the incarnation of God enables our “furtherance in good”:

Thirdly, with regard to charity [‘love’], which is greatly enkindled by this [that is, by the incarnation]; hence Augustine says: “What greater cause is there of the Lord’s coming than to show God’s love for us?” And he afterwards adds: “If we have been slow to love, at least let us hasten to love in return.”

     We are creatures who love, and so finding out that there is a God who loves us enough to risk allowing us existence and then to become one of us and die as one of the least of us (whence the common addition of “even” in “even death on a cross,” Philippians 2:8) is to discover that the universe is not a blank or a hell but a home appropriate for our nature. As I said in an earlier post, “Realization of the place of love in the universe is like unexpectedly meeting a close friend in an empty desert or a strange city — not in a wishful vision but in reality.” And it is in the incarnation that, above all other provision for our needs, we learn of God’s love and so are prepared to love each other:

God shows his love for us in this way: while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

In this the love of God was shown among us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
In this we know about love: not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the sacrifice for our sins.
We have seen and we testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the world’s Savior . . . And so we have come to know and to believe God’s love among us.
We love because God first loved us. If anyone says “I love God” and hates a fellow human, that’s a lie. (1 John 4:9-10, 14, 16, 19-20)

In that last-quoted verse I have turned “his brother” into “a fellow human” for the sake of gender-inclusion, but then it might also make another point. “Brother” in that 1 John context might suggest to us “fellow Christian,” but “human” suggests not just people I encounter at church but also some of the broader mass I pass on the road or see in TV news coverage of what’s happening on the streets in Iran, Russia, or China. That limited sense of “brother” — “fellow Christian” — might represent the original intention of 1 John, but what Jesus says in Matthew 5 should take away that or any other caution we might want to exercise in whom we love:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” so that you may thereby prove to be children of your heavenly Father, since he makes his sun rise on bad people as well as good and sends rain to both the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love people who love you, what reward do you get? Don’t even tax collectors do as much? And if you greet only your relatives, what more are you doing than anyone else? Don’t even Gentiles do that much? Therefore be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48)

Whom God loves, we love, because we have learned of love from him.