To Love God Is to Know God
Posted by pastorbill09 on April 2, 2009
Possibly my favorite passage of scripture is I John 4:7-8: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
Love is a hard thing to define and pin down. When the Bible speaks of love it isn’t talking about sentimentality or romance. Love sometimes is hard as flint. But I don’t think it can be used cynically, such as, “I’m hurting you because I love you.” In our hands love has potential to be immensely destructive, just as everything in our hands has that potential. I don’t think we can haul out love as an excuse for every nasty thing we might say or do to one another. If it’s genuine it will build up and not tear down.
I came across a nice quote from Robert Capon, the Episcopal priest and writer. He writes, “When all is said and done, what the world most needs from the church is not so much instruction about the nature of the mystery as a glimpse of the mystery itself operative in us.” That mystery is love.
How is God’s love operative in us? How are we able to show others God’s love at work in the world? I suppose it begins by accepting the reality of that love for ourselves. Too many of us are convinced we live beyond the pale of God’s love. Learning to accept God’s acceptance, joining a club that would have us for members to paraphrase Groucho Marx, may be the beginning of knowing love, the beginning of knowing God.
Peace,
Pastor Bill
