God is Love!

Anthony B. Robinson, a minister of the United Church of Christ in the US, writes:

We have imagined that Christianity itself is a religion of virtue. But no, Desmond Tutu reminded us, “Christianity is not a religion of virtue; it is a religion of grace.” And there's a difference. A religion of virtue says, “If you are good, then God will love you.” A religion of grace says, “God loves you.” God loves you despite your foibles and failures, not because you're so good but as a sinner in need of mercy. God loves you; live then as one who is beloved, who has been forgiven. (http://www.inwardoutward.org 30/4/2012)

It is not our duty to love. It is our privilege. It is not our responsibility to care for others. It is our gift. It is not our obligation to honour God. It is our delight. Because love born of a sense of duty or responsibility or obligation is not freely given. It is a task, a requirement, a burden. Love born of obligation is love given out of fear; given for our own sakes that we will not be dishonourable or disreputable or punished for what we have not done. That is not the love that is God’s gift to us; nor is it the love that God calls out from us. The love that we receive from God is a gift of grace. We do not earn it. We do not deserve it. We cannot prevent it or hinder it. We can only respond to it. And if our response comes from a recognition of God’s love as gift, it will be a response of freedom, and thanksgiving, and love.

That is God’s message to us in Jesus—that God loves us utterly. God loves us enough to enter God’s own Creation in order to demonstrate that love. God loves us enough to participate in the whole of human life, even death, in order to demonstrate that love. God loves us enough that God does not withhold anything from us. We have all that God can give us. We are made in God’s image, gifted with the creativity of the Creator. We are people made for relationship with God and with each other, gifted with the very nature of our Creator God. We are invited, but never coerced, into relationship with God and with each, gifted with the very freedom to choose, to act according to our own wills, as God acts in accordance with God’s will. All this is gift from God. And it is in and through this gift that love begins and ends. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God” (1 John 4:7).

It is the very nature of God to have grace, to be gracious, to offer God’s self generously and without reserve to the creation that God has so lovingly made. Before we know anything about God, God has already been at work in our lives—creating us, forming us, shaping us.

Grace is the absolute, unprovoked, unconditional generosity of God. God creates us, God reconciles us and God makes us holy through absolutely no effort of our own. God is above all things, and beyond all things and precedes all things in God’s great works of creation, redemption and sanctification—making us, liberating us and sustaining us as God’s people.

God’s grace comes before everything because grace is the very nature of God. Before we know God, God knew us. Before we fail God, God loved us. Before we honour God, God creates and awakens us for relationship. Everything we have comes from God; and everything we know has its origin in God. We have been gifted with all this through the graciousness of God—God’s utter, unprovoked, unconditional desire to share God’s self with us.

Grace is utter good news for us. God created us. God loves us. God wants us to be in relationship so much that God is prepared to even enter God’s own creation in the person of Jesus. As creatures made in God’s image by God, we too are programmed for relationship—it’s in our “DNA” as human beings. And we are particularly created for relationship with the God who will do all that God can to enable that relationship—all that God can except taking away our free will, our free decision to be in relationship with God. God will never force God’s self on us, because coerced or forced relationship is not relationship at all. God treats us with utter respect as unique and independent beings, despite the fact that God created us especially for God.

And this is God’s covenant with us. God created us for relationship. God promises us to always be open for and indeed enabling our relationship with God and with each other.

God’s covenant with us begins in creation; is present throughout human history, fully revealed in Jesus Christ; and present with us now through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is utter, unprovoked, unconditional gift—the eternal nature of God—God’s grace.

And we are invited into and out of this graciousness to share that gift of grace with the whole Creation, in gratitude and thanksgiving, in freedom and by choice, in unconditional, un-coerced love, not for our own sakes, but the sake of the very nature of love itself—that graciousness which is always oriented to the Other, and open to the discovery of the gift in the very act of self-giving love.

Today as we present this year’s Alwyn Jones Community Service Award, we honour the self-giving love that members of our community have shown; and we give thanks to God for the graciousness and freedom to act in love which is God’s very gift to humanity.