Category Archives: Being God’s Beloved

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 18: God’s Love and God’s Being

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

We are roughly at the middle of our 40-day reflection on Being God’s Love. How are you doing so far? We’ve focused mostly on the Old Testament so far. Has this helped you rethink some assumptions about the God of the Old Testament? Do you begin to see that contrary to the popular perception that the Old Testament God is primitive, vengeful and bloodthirsty, the Old Testament God, from start to end, actively and persistently loves Israel and desires to be in loving relationship with the whole world?

I decided to finish off this stage of our journey with a summary that comes not from the Old Testament, but the first letter of John in the New Testament. This is probably one of the last written books of the Bible, and so it very nicely bookends our beginning in Genesis 1, which is probably one of the first written books of the Bible. John, who lived a long life, had much time to ponder the mysteries of his encounter with Jesus of Nazareth, whom he later recognised as the Logos, the Word, who was with God in the very beginning and active in the process of creation. John has penetrating insights into the heart of God. He also has an exceptional grasp of the long narrative of salvation story, from the very beginning.

John’s first letter addresses a number of themes that are not important for today’s reflection. He wrote this letter – perhaps more a sermon than a letter – to strengthen Christians as they grappled against a false theology that came from Christian Gnostics.[1] A particularly important part of this false teaching was Docetism, which denied that Jesus actually became human, died and rose again – he merely appeared to be human, to die and rise. They emphasised a secret knowledge (gnosis) and believed that everything physical was unimportant and evil (and on these grounds felt free to engage in all kinds of physical pleasures).

One of the important themes that resonates through John’s letter is love. 1 John 2:3-11 emphasises Christ’s command to love and the importance of living out love for our brothers and sisters. 1 John 3:11-24 restates the important command to love one another, linking it at the end of the passage to Christ’s command to believe in Jesus and love one another. 1 John 4:7-5:3 describes God as love, revealed in Christ, setting us the example of love for one another, which is his command. In total, 41 of the letter’s 105 verses (over a third) speak about love – God’s love for us, our love for one another, and Christ’s command to love!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been emphasising two aspects of God’s love. First, I have emphasised that love is at the centre of God’s being – love is embedded in the character of God. Theologians speak about this as the immanent Trinity, referring to the internal functioning and being of the triune God – who God is as God, within God’s self. Second, I have emphasised God’s loving actions throughout human history, from the start of creation until the end of the Old Testament. And I shall continue to emphasise God’s loving actions in the New Testament – supremely through the Son of God, who is the embodiment of love. Theologians speak about this as the economic Trinity, referring to God in action, the God we see working in human history, what God has chosen to reveal to us about God’s self.[2]

Many theologians are cautious about speaking with too much certainty about the immanent Trinity, about who God is within God’s self. This is because we really don’t know God that well – we know God through God’s actions (the economic Trinity) and then we make inferences from what we see and experience to what we think God is like internally (the immanent Trinity). But I have argued that what we do know about the immanent Trinity is that God is triune. And based on that I have argued that relationship is inherent within the being of God,[3] and based on that I’ve argued that love is found in the being of God.[4]

1 John picks us these same themes: that God is, in God’s being, love; and that God’s actions demonstrate God’s love for humanity. We see this most clearly in the 1 John 4:7-5:3.

Twice in this passage, John writes, “God is love” (4:8 & 16). The phrase appears nowhere else in the Bible. Just these two occurrences, twice, eight verses apart. The first occurrence in verse 8 is particularly illuminating. John writes, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” John emphasises love as the essential characteristic of God. It is not just that God acts in loving ways; more than just that, God is inherently, characteristically Love. In much the same way that Jesus says that the Great Commandments sum up the whole law and the prophets, John here says that Love sums up the whole of God – Love is who God is. Because Love is so defining of who God is, says John, if we do not love, we cannot possibly know God, because we will be cut off from The Defining Characteristic of God.

In verse 16, John says, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” Here John makes this character statement about the being of God, and then says that if we live in love then we live in God and God lives in us. Love is so defining of who God is that Love becomes almost a synonym for God, so that living in Love is equivalent to living in God. Because God is quintessential love, when we find love we will have found God, because God is love. There is no authentic love outside of God. John says similar things elsewhere, for example, “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God” (4:7).

Most of the rest of this passage speaks to God’s love in action. Having described wind, John provides examples of how we will see wind, through the effects of the wind – sand being swept up, trees waving, flags flapping. We cannot see the wind itself, just like we cannot see the essential being of God. But we can see the effects of the wind, just like we can see the outworking of God’s love.

So immediately after verse 8, where John wrote, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love,” John explains, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (4:9). Love as the essence of God is not something we can grasp or perceive, but we can recognise this love in action, and John gives us the most sublime and vivid example of love in action – the coming of the Son into the world, which we call the incarnation. Of all of God’s loving acts in the history of the world, the coming of the Son into the world is the most powerful, clear and irrefutable demonstration of the infinitely rich love that lies within the heart of God.

John continues, “This is love” (4:10a). He recognises that love is a rather abstract term, and requires a concrete example. The example he now provides is this, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (4:10b). God is, in God’s being, love. And God demonstrates this love by sending his Son to deal with our brokenness and our estrangement from God. Jesus’ entire life – from his incarnation, through his life and ministry, to his death and resurrection – is Love-in-Action. Jesus is, in effect, love with skin on. He is the embodiment of love – love incarnate, love enfleshed.

The whole of scripture is a great love story. It is the story of God’s great love for humanity, a love that is rooted deep in the core of God’s being, demonstrated over and over, regardless of the fickleness of humanity, regardless of how often we ignore, turn away from or reject God. We can be confident that the love story continues through our own time. And you can be confident that the love story includes you – that you are one of the characters who is much loved by God, God’s beloved.

Meditation for the Day

Meditate on this phrase, “God is love”. Repeat it over and over, slowly, in an attitude of prayer. Listen to God speaking to you. Open your heart to know this God who is love.

Prayer for the Day

My God, you are Love.

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[1] Coetzee, J. C. (1993). The letters of John. In A. B. du Toit (Ed.), Guide to the New Testament (Volume VI, pp. 201-226). Halfway House, South Africa: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, p. 207.

[2] Moltmann, J. (1993). The Trinity and the kingdom. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Rahner, K. (1967). The Trinity. New York: Cross Road Publishing, pp. 1-2.

[3] Rahner, p. 102.

[4] Moltmann, p. 151.

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 17: God’s Love and God’s Standards

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

If God loves us so much, so much that God will forgive anything that we do, then we can do anything we want, right?

Actually, no.

In the early Church, this line of thinking had become popular in some circles. The rationale was that if God’s grace is what cancels sin in our lives, then the more we sin, the more we experience God’s grace. And since God’s grace is a good thing, a lot of sin must surely be good too! And so Paul writes, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? …count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus… For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:1-2, 11 & 14).

Law, of course, refers to the Old Testament patterns of sin and righteousness. In those days God had spelled out, in the Ten Commandments, clear standards for right living. Most of them are pretty obvious: don’t worship idols, don’t murder, don’t steal and so on. But of course, there are all kinds of subtle situations where something may or may not be acceptable, so over time these Ten Commandments grew into several hundred – detailed, specific and neatly defined standards for righteous living. If you kept all of these, you were okay with God. If not, you had to make amends.

These laws were hard to keep, because there were so many and they were so detailed. But if you knew them, then keeping the law was not that difficult – you just had to avoid those specific behaviours and, no matter what else you did, you were righteous. By emphasising the letter of the law, the defined behavioural standards, it was quite possible to be rotten in the heart but outwardly righteous. There were people like this.

Jesus called such men whitewashed tombs. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28).

Strong words indeed! And perhaps true of you and me. It is much easier to focus on the specifics of external behaviour, like not swearing at church or coming to church drunk, than on the heart, like not thinking greedy or angry thoughts, or forgiving someone who has hurt us.

Jesus proceeded to raise the standards even higher, by emphasising not only outward righteousness, but also inward righteousness. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgement.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgement” (Matthew 5:21-22a). It is one thing – quite easy for most of us – to not murder someone. I myself have never murdered anyone! But it is quite another to not be angry with my brother or neighbour. Gosh, I’ve been angry countless times! This is an impossibly high standard!

And Jesus continues raising the bar higher and yet higher, on matters of lustful thoughts and desires, divorce, making oaths, seeking revenge and loving your enemies. This last is also a real challenge for us in daily life. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45a).

And to cap it all, Jesus calls us to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Impossible! Perfection is reserved for God and God alone.

God may love us, but the expectations God has for us are frighteningly demanding. Honestly, we cannot do it.

How does this demandingness tally with God’s love for us? It does not feel very loving to set impossibly high standards that we are sure to fall short of, does it? Good teachers and loving parents don’t do that to their students and children. We know that self-esteem is crushed when we expect more than someone is capable of. Repeatedly not meeting up to expectations is more likely to result in giving up than greater reaching for the standard.

To be sure, living under grace through Christ is a most peculiar place, full of apparent contradictions. But when we can step back and see the whole picture, we realise that they are not contradictions at all, but results of God’s extravagant love for us.

God created humanity with great vision and optimism, to be the crown of creation, the most beautiful, radiant and wonderful thing to emerge from the hand of God. And indeed we once were.

But since the Fall we are not quite what we once were. The remains of the spectacular beings that we once were are still evident, but rather fallen into ruin. We are, as Francis Schaeffer has famously said, ‘glorious ruins’. Our fallenness is the gap between the God’s vision and our reality.

What we think of as God’s standards is in fact God’s vision of us. God retains a picture of us as the magnificent castle, even though we are now glorious ruins. God still desires and expects us to be everything that we were created to be. Those are certainly high standards.

Jesus’ anger at the religious leaders of his day was not because they had abandoned God’s standards. Rather, it was because they had watered down God’s vision to a handful of petty rules, which made a mockery of God’s vision. They had trivialised God’s vision, turning the glorious human into a scarecrow. And so Jesus’ raising of the standards was part of an attempt to turn us back to that glorious vision, to remind us that God made us for so much more than just following some rules. That God’s vision concerned the fabric of our being, the innermost core of our existence. He was cautioning us not to settle for the scarecrow. The raised standard was not intended to cause us to give up; rather it was to inspire us to recognise afresh the wonderful beings that we once were and will one day be again.

In the meantime, as we strive towards becoming that vision, grace is made available to us. Because no matter how much we try, we cannot quite reach God’s standards. Rather than suffering under guilt and damnation, God generously forgives and pardons, so that we can continue the journey of being transformed into the image of the Son. It is as if God smiles at us as we fall down, and says, “Never mind, precious one. You are trying. Let’s try again. Here let me help you.”

We will not reach the destination of a glorious self in this lifetime, but this is no ‘never-ending story’. This story will, for sure, end on that great and glorious Day of the Lord, when we will be restored to our former magnificence. Grace, then, is not given for us to use as an excuse for living a sinful life. Rather, it is given to help us pick ourselves up after failure and continue the upward journey.

God’s love permeates all of this, from start to end, so that we are never bereft. While God has these exceptionally high standards and desires for us to attain them, we are never forced, because love does not force. God creates freedom for us to choose whether we follow or turn away. We are never coerced. God sets before us, particularly in the person of Jesus, a model of what we could be and invites us to strive towards that. But God does not insist on it. There is freedom to choose.

God does not desire puppets or robots. If God had desired such, God could easily have created them. Instead, God desired creatures that would freely choose fellowship with God. And that meant creating us with the freedom to choose alienation from God. That freedom has created problems for us, in the form of sin and its ramifications. But freedom is important for us and the gift of freedom is an expression of God’s love. Love that is not freely given is no love at all.

Sometimes we may reflect on the demands of Christian living and feel a little tired and constrained, wishing that we could just relax and have fun. It is a bit like being on a diet – you want to lose weight and be healthy, but a slice of chocolate cake would be so yummy! When faced with such temptations, it does not help much to hold before us the image of a judge-God, wagging his finger and frowning in disapproval at us, thin lips pursed. That does not inspire us to choose the righteous path.

Rather, let us hold before us the image of our lover-God, who desires the best for us, who believes in us, who is optimistic about who we can be, who we know will love us regardless of how much we succeed or fail, who has promised to never abandon us. The alternative is not attractive – a long descending path leading into darkness. We know what is best for us – into the arms of Love.

Meditation for the Day

Where are you on the continuum of sin-righteousness? Select one area of your life that you have not adequately surrendered to God’s Spirit. Now, imagining the God of love, ask God to help you invest in working out your salvation in that area.

Prayer for the Day

Creator God, I thank you for creating me in your image and for having a wonderful vision for who I can be. Please give me the energy, discipline and passion to journey ever closer to that vision.

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 16: God’s Love and God’s Justice

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

Having spent many days reflecting on God’s love, some may be becoming a bit anxious that God seems soft, even spineless. Where are the standards, the commandments, the consequences? Ideally, we might like to live in a nice, mushy, lovey-dovey world, but in truth we live in a fallen world where people do bad things to other people. Where does God’s love fit into that? What about justice, punishment, judgement? Are we really all called to love one another to such an extent that we allow wrongdoers to get away with murder? Does forgiveness mean no-one is held accountable for their crimes?

These are complex questions, to which there are no easy answers. When we place God’s love in the centre of life, things get harder not easier. When holiness or righteousness are central, it is much easier – God loves you but expects you to do right, and if you do wrong there are consequences, so you better watch out! The eye-for-an-eye philosophy of justice is very workable. But then Jesus comes and says, “Turn the other cheek” and “forgive 70 times 70 times” and that is very hard to understand, let alone live out.

So, let us step back a bit and define these key words: love and justice. This in itself is a huge challenge as there are so many understandings of both. But let me suggest some definitions for us to chew over.

God’s love for us, and our replicated love for others, is intended to be unconditional – it emanates from the goodness of God and God’s superabundance of love. God has so much love that God is able to love even if we don’t love God back, even if we don’t believe in God, even if we hate God. In this way, God’s love is dependent entirely on God, and not at all on us. We sometimes call this agape love – self-less, self-giving love that seeks nothing in return.

But this is not the whole of God’s love. While God’s love is indeed unconditional, it also greatly desires relationship with us.[1] God’s love is not conditional on the relationship, unlike chesed, which is contingent on the covenant relationship. However, God’s love yearns for covenant relationship, seeks mutual and reciprocal exchange of love. We see this in God’s behaviour. Rather than sitting in heaven and loving us unconditionally from afar, God decided, because of extravagant love, to extend God’s self into the world by sending the Son to us to work for reconciliation between us and God (John 3:16, Romans 5:6-11). Divine love, then, while unconditional, seeks relationship and reciprocity.

Christian love – that is, our love for others – is modelled on God’s love. Linda Woodhead has defined it as “an active desire for the well-being of the neighbour, and for communion with him or her, based on a recognition of the neighbour’s unique worth”.[2] Her definition is helpful, if challenging. Christian love is initiated by ourselves, and in this way unconditional – we choose to love because we choose to love, not because the person is love-worthy. We love because of the inherent worth of the other as one of God’s creatures, but we do not whitewash all people with the same inherent worth – a bland, faceless love for everyone. Rather, Christian love emphasises recognition of unique worth; that is, I extend myself to seek out particular aspects of that individual that are loveable and even likable. And it is two-way, seeking not only to express love at arm’s length, but also to establish relationship, communion, fellowship. And all of this is just the way God loves me and you and the other person.

And justice? Justice can be thought of as God’s desire for right relationships between people and others (God and other people).[3] ‘Right relationships’ includes freedom, human rights, access to resources, dignity, opportunity to get ahead, the absence of exploitation or oppression, having a voice, having power, acceptance, respect. So, where there are wrong relationships, there is no justice, and God’s vision and desire for humanity is violated. When we think of God working for justice or righteousness, then, we are thinking of God working to establish right relationships between people. In other words, God’s commitment to justice is a commitment to liberation.

God’s motive for justice is love. And the result of justice, as defined above, is love. So justice and love are not incompatible – they are very closely related. Love requires justice, because love cannot stand idly by and watch God’s beloved being harmed. But justice requires love, because justice can easily degenerate into a dictatorship. Fortunately for us, in God love and justice are in perfect balance, with God’s love for all of creation in the centre.

Let us accept God’s love for every individual, both good people and bad people, both believers and unbelievers. God does not merely love abstractly – God loves relationally, personally, by name. Thus God is constantly at work to establish fellowship with each of these individuals. In so doing, God seeks to establish a right relationship between God and each individual. Various life events, then, including both happy and unhappy life experiences, may be agents of God’s efforts to establish such relationships, thereby working for justice in the divine-human relationship.

But what does God do when one person (or group of people) harms another person? The first person is not exercising love and is behaving in an unjust way. How does God balance love and justice in such a situation? If God merely forgives that person, where is justice?

The problem with these questions is that they stem from an inadequate grasp of love and justice. And of course, from the pain of being harmed, and particularly so when it is someone we love, such as a spouse or child, who has been harmed.

God’s love, as we’ve defined it above, is for the well-being of the individual and for communion with her or him. So, when God loves that person, God desires their well-being. And our well-being is tied up in our being in right relationships with those around us and with God. So love cannot condone or accommodate harming others – this is antithetical to love. God’s love desires wholeness in that person, and wholeness involves right relationships, and thus God’s love does not overlook the wrong doing, but works towards repentance and reconciliation.

In this way, there is no conflict between love and justice. Justice demands right relationships, and right relationships are vital to well-being and communion. Thus, God’s justice requires repentance by the one who has harmed another. Repentance, contrition, penitence are essential elements of justice and necessary for reconciliation.

But notice that this kind of justice is not about throwing perpetrators into jail (or hell) and throwing away the key. It is not an eye for an eye. It is not just about punishment or retribution. Rather, divine justice, Christian justice, is ultimately about setting things right – relationships, values, respect, wholeness, wellbeing. When all is right, all is just.

We ourselves have experienced this with God, even if we don’t feel like we were a very bad person. Our sin left us in a wrong relationship with God and other people and, indeed, ourselves. According to justice defined as retribution, we deserved to be punished, cast out, thrown down. But God’s love for us desired justice defined as right relationship. And so God sought out what is loveable in us, called us to change, established a clear relationship with us, and prompted us to clean up our act and to engage in wholesome relationships with those around us. Even so, none of us does all of these things very well. Yet God still loves us, and works for our righteousness.

We have been justified with God. And “since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand… God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:1-2, 5-8).

Meditation for the Day

Think about your own salvation, how God expressed divine love in reaching out to you, in spite of all your sin, and has been working ever since for you to be in right relationship. Think about someone who has harmed you. How do you transfer what God has done for you to what you do for that person? This is not easy.

Prayer for the Day

Oh God of justice and love, please work in me your great work of love to transform me into your likeness and to establish righteousness and justice in my relationships with the world around me.

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[1] Marshall, C. D. (2001). Beyond retribution: A New Testament vision for justice, crime, and punishment. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, p. 27.

[2] Woodhead, L. (1992). Love and justice. Studies in Christian Ethics, 1(5), 44-63, p. 56.

[3] Marshall, p. 28.

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 15: God’s Love and God’s Wrath

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

There is no denying that God expresses not only love but also wrath and anger in the pages of the scripture. It may, we sometimes think, be comforting to worship a God who experiences and expresses nothing but love, forgiveness, kindness. But in both Old and New Testaments, there are references to the wrath of God that we have to face up to. And, I suggest, it is good that God shows both love and wrath; indeed, they flow from the same centre in the heart of God – wrath is a facet of love.

I encourage you to read Deuteronomy 29:18-28, which is an extended passage about God’s wrath. It is within a larger passage where Moses calls the Israelites to renew their covenant with God. Having reminded them of God’s faithfulness in bringing them out of Egypt, he cautions them about flippancy in their relationship with God. He says that some people will take advantage of God’s chesed (God’s lovingkindness rooted in God’s covenant with Israel) and say to themselves, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way” (29:19). But, says Moses, such thinking will bring down God’s wrath, “his wrath and zeal will burn against that man… the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven” (29:20). He then broadens his focus to the whole of Israel, from the perspective of those who are not Israelites, asking why God would be so angry with them. The answer is, “because this people abandoned the covenant of the Lord” (29:25). And then Moses heavily emphasises God’s wrath: “In furious anger and in great wrath the Lord uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now” (29:28). As if God’s anger and wrath are not enough, we now have great wrath and furious anger.

And God’s wrath is not limited to the Old Testament. Romans 1:18 has, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”

How are we to reconcile God’s love and God’s wrath?

First, God’s wrath is not so much the inflicting of penalties equivalent to the person’s sin, as a withdrawal of divine protection.

In both Old and New Testaments, God’s wrath is often expressed as God choosing to withdraw protection from those who sin so that they experience the natural consequences of their sin.[1] The Romans 1 reading is a good example. After writing that God’s wrath is being revealed, Paul explains, “Therefore [because they rejected God] God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts” (1:24). And he repeats this twice more: “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts” (1:26) and “Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done” (1:28). This three-fold “giving over” explains what Paul means by “the wrath of God”. Marshall explains further, “God’s act [of wrath] is not so much a matter of direct, individually tailored punitive intervention as it is a matter of measured withdrawal of his protective influence and control, a refusal to intervene to stem the deleterious effects of human rebellion”.[2]

On the one hand, then, such a ‘giving over’ is not God wreaking suffering on those who sin; but neither is it a passive withdrawal. It is a personal decision that God makes to cease protecting someone. The consequences of the loss of protection may be severe, but they are, essentially, of that person’s own doing. That is the wrath of God.

There are precedents for this understanding of wrath elsewhere in scripture. There are, for example, many passages that express God’s wrath and judgement as God hiding God’s face or turning away. “They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed. Many disasters and difficulties will come upon them, and on that day they will ask, ‘Have not these disasters come upon us because our God is not with us?’” (Deuteronomy 31:16-17).

Second, God’s wrath is less about punishment and more about reconciliation.

God’s wrath is not simply a venting of angry emotion, like a pressure cooker letting off steam. Neither is it a desire to obliterate or annihilate people. Rather, it is a strategy to persuade people to turn back to God – to repent of sin and seek to be reconciled to God. For example, in 2 Chronicles 15:2 we read, “This is what the Lord says, ‘You have abandoned me; therefore, I now abandon you to Shishak’.” This is another example of God’s wrath expressed as God turning away. In this instance, “The leaders of Israel and the king humbled themselves and said, ‘The Lord is just’” (15:3). Here we see what appears frequently in passages on God’s wrath, namely that God’s intention is not so much punitive as restorative. “The point is not to torment human beings but to enable them to see their moral frailty and their consequent need for God’s healing assistance”.[3] In 2 Chronicles, God’s abandonment results in a recognition of need for God and repentance of sin. God then says, “Since they have humbled themselves, I will not destroy them but will soon give them deliverance. My wrath will not be poured out on Jerusalem through Shishak” (15:7). God relents on the expression of wrath, because the purpose of the wrath (to evoke repentance and call to reconciliation) was achieved.

Third, God’s wrath is a facet of God’s love, giving partial expression to God’s love.

It is good that God feels strongly about sin. If God did not stand against sin, who would stand up for me when someone sins against me? If God loves me, and someone harms me, is it not appropriate that God should be angry with that person? Would God be loving if I, his beloved, am harmed by someone else and God just continues to love both me and them? Isn’t a loving response to someone harming me for God to be angry with them? Think about this in terms of our own loved ones. I love my son, and when someone hurts him, I get angry and want to express my wrath at that person. Is that not love? Would my turning to the person who hurts my son and hugging him and inviting him to supper not be an act of not-love towards my son?

Love and wrath are not mutually incompatible. Rather wrath is a facet of love. Wrath is an appropriate response when someone who is loved is harmed. Wrath is also an appropriate response when someone who is loved harms someone else or her or himself. It is a manifestation of God’s love when God gets mad at me because I sin, because I treat myself (created in God’s image) harmfully. And since we are all created in God’s image, whether or not we and they recognise or accept that, God responds with protective love when any one of God’s creatures is harmed. We call that response of protective love ‘wrath’, particularly if we are on the receiving end of it. But from the perspective of the person being protected, it is love. It is all a matter of perspective.

A few years ago, my car was stolen. I was upset because it was a much loved car. And also because it was stolen from a place where I was volunteering my time for a worthy cause – it felt like an injustice. One of the consequences was that I was delayed in marking my students’ assignments, so I informed them of what had happened as part of my apology for the delay. Many students responded with words of encouragement and solidarity. And many of these expressed sentiments like, “Shame, don’t worry Prof, God will cast those men who stole your car into everlasting torment. They will suffer forever for taking your car!” I was taken aback with the vehemence of their support. On the one hand they expressed what I am saying here, that God’s wrath against those men is an expression of God’s solidarity with me, God’s beloved. But on the other hand, they are God’s creatures too and I found myself loving them and praying that God would not punish them for what they did to me!

This is part of the complexity of being God and why I am glad that God is God, rather than me! Love and wrath are easy to get one’s head around if I am God’s beloved and you are God’s enemy. Then of course God will love me and express wrath against you. And in the Old Testament particularly, there is a tendency to divide the world neatly into those within God’s covenant and those who are already in outer darkness. But in modern times we recognise that things are not so simple and clean. We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, loved by God and enemies of God. I can think of many times when I have harmed someone else (sometimes in anger and intent, and sometimes by accident or necessity), or myself or God. In all of those times I am deserving of God’s wrath. But I am also God’s beloved because of my response, through the grace of God, to the call of Christ. So, do I get love or wrath?

There are no neat answers to God’s love and God’s wrath. But as we mull it over, let us consider that God’s wrath always comes from a place of love, with an intention to restore and reconcile. God’s wrath, like God’s holiness, is enclosed in love. God’s wrath is the servant of and therefore subordinate to God’s love.

Meditation for the Day

Think about love and wrath in yourself, particularly in relation to those you love. Can you figure out how they are related, not incompatible? Now escalate those insights to God. God is not just like us, but neither is God completely different from us. Perhaps we can learn something about God as we reflect on ourselves.

Prayer for the Day

Loving God, I thank you that you are willing to take a stand for goodness, for righteousness. Help me to not be an object of your wrath, by empowering me to live in love and faithfulness. And help me to love all those whom you love.

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[1] Marshall, C. D. (2001). Beyond retribution: A New Testament vision for justice, crime, and punishment. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, pp. 169-175.

[2] Marshall, p. 173.

[3] Marshall, p. 175.

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 14: God’s Love and Human Sin

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

Sin is an important topic within the broader theme of God’s love, because sin not only gets in the way of God’s love, but can be considered the antithesis of love for God. Often, when we think about sin, we get hooked up in a litany of sins – sexual lust, lying, blaspheming, stealing, murder, rape and so on. We may also get a bit spiritual and think of sins like pride, sloth, gluttony, gossip. While these are all sins, I’d like us to approach this from a somewhat different perspective, which requires us to start at the very beginning.

On Day 3 we reflected on the heart of God. There we said that God has always been in fellowship with Godself, within the triune Godhead. Father, Son and Spirit have enjoyed perfect intimate communion since before the beginning of time. This kind of relationship – intimate, loving, mutual and egalitarian – is found in the innermost being of God. It not so much something that God does, as something that God is. God does not just engage in relationships; God is relationship.

Out of the fullness of the joy of relationship, God extends Godself beyond the boundaries of God and into relationship with someone other – humanity. This is not about a lack or deficit in God; rather it is about an overabundance of and overwhelming experience of relationship. God desires to expand this kind of fellowship to include others, so that we may know what God knows – the joy of perfect intimacy. God’s intention, then, is for divine-human relationships that mirror the divine-divine relationship – we should love and be loved by God in the same way that the Father, Son and Spirit love and are loved by each other.

On Day 4 we reflected on the idea that God created us in God’s own image. Although this image of God has, over the centuries been thought of as many different things – rationality, morality, creativity and so on – I have suggested that the image of God is best thought of as relationality. Because loving relationship is the heart of God, the image of God must involve loving relationship. And this is borne out by the fact that God created not a singular individual, but a couple, people in relationship with each other, one flesh. And we can thus conclude that we are most like God when we are in the same kind of relationship with each other as is found in the Godhead.

Sin, however, entered the world in Genesis 3, compromising God’s plans for intimate, perfect and eternal relationship with humanity. After Adam and Eve had eaten of the fruit of the Tree, “they realised they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:7). Later, when God came walking in the garden, “they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8). The covering up and hiding jointly point to the crux of the fall – a separation from God. And that separation speaks not to a moral failure, but rather to a relationship failure. No longer do we see the kind of open-hearted, guileless, intimate, no-holds-barred relationship that existed before the Fall.  We became estranged from God. Since that day, humanity has spent its time covering up and hiding from God.

Sin can best be considered the fracturing of relationship, rather than a moral defect in the makeup of people or acts that violate God’s law. “Sin is not primarily a state of corruption calling for a divine manipulative cure, nor guilt to be wiped out through punishment or satisfaction, but estrangement from God requiring reconciliation”.[1] In the wake of estrangement from God comes disregard for God’s values and vision for humanity, and thus humanity rebels against God, resulting in further estrangement. We become not only estranged from God, but also unaware of our estrangement or need for reconciliation.

Because every human is created in the image of God, whether Christian, devout Muslim or atheist, any sin against any person is a sin also against God. God says as much in Genesis 6:9, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” In other words, killing another person is tantamount to killing God – God is present by the image of God in every person, thus every person is connected to God (even if they are not aware of it) and any attack against another person is an attack against God. Thus there is a strong relational quality to sin.

And in addition, because we ourselves are created in the image in the God, any sin against ourselves is also a sin against God. When I do things in private, things that do not hurt anyone else but go against what God created me to be, I am sinning against myself, and thus against the image of God in me, and thus against God. Sin is relational, but it is also personal. The notion that anything goes so long as we don’t hurt anyone else does not pan out when we consider that we ourselves bear the image of God in our innermost being.

So, sin is like a three-stranded cord, with psychological, social and spiritual aspects – it is not merely an individual problem. Psychologically, I sin against myself, harming myself. Socially, I sin against others, harming them. Spirituality, all sin against myself and sin against others is sin against God’s image and thus against God. It may help to think of the heavenly and earthly beings as a massive system or network, in which the activities of each one impact on all the others because of the shared image of God. An injury to another person or oneself or a secret blasphemy against God causes injury to other, self or God, with a resultant ripple effect through the entire system. There is no such thing as private sin.

Every sin thus grieves God. Sin is a turning away from everything that God created us to be, from God’s intention in creation and from God’s vision for us as individuals and as a race. Small wonder that God wiped the slate clean in Genesis 6.

The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth… because I am grieved that I have made them’. (Genesis 6:5-7)

The Flood is surely an act of rage, of divine wrath against humanity. Wiping out almost the entire human race should not be trivialised. And in the pulpit this wrath is often emphasised as God’s reaction to our sin; wrath, which leads to judgement and damnation.

But what is striking in these verses from Genesis 6 is the centrality of grief and pain, rather than anger. This passage, more than most, gives a unique and invaluable glimpse into the inner emotional life of God, as we are told what God felt and thought as God deliberated on the state of humanity. Grief and pain are the two emotions reported. Although God speaks of wiping humanity from the face of the earth, there is no mention of anger, and indeed the writing itself is more grief-wracked than wrathful.

Similarly, our sin elicits in God primarily a grief reaction rather than a rage reaction. When I sin, when you sin, God’s heart breaks. Anger may and sometimes does come later, but the core of God’s response to our sin is sadness, grief, disappointment.

Why? Because God has created us for so much more. God has in mind an image of what we are intended to be of what we could be if we remained in fellowship with God. And it is a glorious, wonderful image! The gap between that image and the reality is enough to break God’s heart.

Sometimes, when I sin, I want to run and hide from God’s anger towards me, and so I avoid him, which of course makes sin easier, which draws me still further away. It is a vicious circle that leads me away from fellowship, and not closer to God.

But if, rather, I think of my sin as grieving God, my motivation for avoiding sin changes. Instead of not sinning out of fear of judgement, I avoid sinning so that I do not grieve the one who I know loves me more than any other. I avoid sinning because my relationship with God is so important and vital. And when I do sin, I don’t hide out of fear, but turn back to God and share God’s grief over my own wretchedness. Grief invites reconciliation, while anger invites avoidance.

Our sin wounds God because we are intimately connected with God, whether or not we believe in God, whether or not we recognise we are connected with God. The connection is a fact that does not care about what we think about God. And that connection is an expression of God’s love for us. Our sin, then, is a violation of that love, a betrayal of God’s love.

Meditation for the Day

Give fresh thought to the topic of sin. Think about sin in your own life. Try to move beyond listing sins, to perceiving the relational aspects of sin. Bring this to God in prayer.

Prayer for the Day

Precious Saviour, forgive me for the many ways in which I break your image, which you have woven into the fabric of my being. Help me, day by day, breath by breath, to be transformed into your likeness.

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[1] Brümmer, V. (2005). Atonement, Christology and the Trinity: Making sense of Christian doctrine. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, p. 49.

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Being God’s Beloved: Talk 2: God’s Old Testament Love

On 19 March, we had the second talk in this series called “Being God’s Beloved”. This week, we considered the God of the Old Testament, and specifically the ways in which God’s loving heart is revealed throughout the Old Testament. We give particular attention to the story of Jonah, Nineveh and God.

Video not opening? Try clicking here.

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 13: God’s Love and God’s Holiness

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

As we come towards the midpoint of our reflections, we step away from the scriptures for a while and reflect on some important theological principles concerning God’s love. These draw, in various ways, on what we have covered so far, and also anticipate what is yet to come.

Today, I invite you to think about what you think is the dominant or primary attribute of God. This is, in some ways, a return to Day 3, where we reflected on the heart of God. So, you have the advantage of already knowing my answer – love is at the heart of God. However, not all Christians agree on this – at least, not in the way I have presented it. So, this is a question that you need to think about for yourself. To decide what is central to God, what is dominant in God.

Let me present you with a commonly held view, particularly by Christians in the reformed (Calvinist) tradition, which argues for the centrality of God’s holiness. I am drawing for this on a book by Ronald Wallace, called The atoning death of Christ.

Wallace starts on the first page with the problem of sin, which he defines as “a violation of the sacred order of life established by God for his people”.[1] In the following line, he links sin (this violation of God’s order) with God’s holiness: “[God’s] holiness was challenged by [sin], and his personal bearing and life were insulted by it. He could no longer look upon his people with favour but had to avert his face from the taint of sin.”[2] Sin, then, is something that offends God personally, and specifically God’s holiness. The holiness of God is central in this presentation, and makes sin anathema to God. God is sin-repellent – God cannot stand to be anywhere near the stench of sin. And because we are inherently sinful, we become an unpleasant odour in God’s nostrils.

God’s inevitable reaction, says Wallace, is to destroy all who were involved, in any way, in the sin – this is the wrath of God. “Behind the manifestation of God’s judgement there is God’s own inward reaction and hatred of our sin that we cannot begin to conceive. It is only because he restrains this, within himself, that we are not consumed (Lam. 3:22). We noted in our Old Testament study how God appears to struggle with himself to control himself.”[3] Wallace sees an ongoing tension within God between God’s desire to obliterate us and God’s love for us.

But while it may seem to us that God’s love constrains God’s holiness (which is the source of God’s wrath), Wallace sees it as the other way round. God’s holiness is dominant, and constrains God’s love: “There is not only love in the world which we have forsaken and to which we seek to return in reconciliation, but also a law which encloses love. The God to whom we seek to return is one whose love expresses itself in ways that are constant and upon which trust can be built.”[4] So, according to Wallace, God’s love is subordinate to God’s law. In other words, God may desire to love us unconditionally and forgive us freely, but there is a ‘law’ that constrains God’s love, and that ‘law’ is God’s holiness, God’s justice, God’s need for purity. “At Calvary we see love at the centre, yet enclosed in law… We can… regard justice as the law of God’s being, and indeed of his love. It is grounded in the nature of God himself. God could not ignore sin because he cannot ignore his own holiness.”[5]

So, that is Wallace’s view: God’s holiness is dominant, and while there is love in the heart of God, it is constrained by God’s holiness, thus love is not free to act as it chooses.

I wish to suggest to you that the opposite is closer to the truth of God’s character, namely that while holiness is indeed an important and even central characteristic of God, God’s holiness is overwhelmed by God’s love, so that we are more at risk of being flooded by God’s love than by God’s wrath.

God is indeed holy, righteous, just and pure. There is ample witness to this in the scriptures. And God has a vision for who humanity should be and how we should behave. When we deviate from this vision and wind up as less that we were created to be, God is upset. ‘Upset’ is not a very appropriate word for God, though – it trivialises God response to our sin. ‘Anger’ or ‘wrath’ are surely more appropriate words for the Divine response.

But God’s wrath is tempered by God’s intense love for humanity. This love is so central and so powerful that it intercepts and cools down wrath. God’s love is like a cold shower or like a fire extinguisher. It simply shuts off wrath. And because, if we could quantify these things, God has a lot more love than wrath, love always wins – like in rock-paper-scissors, rock always beats scissors. Imagine it like this. God’s wrath is like a raging bonfire, with flames reaching metres into the air, ready to consume everything around it. But God’s love is like the Niagara Falls – a massive quantity of water. It really doesn’t matter how big the fire is, the Falls will always extinguish it.

While Wallace argues that God’s love is enclosed by law, but I suggest that God’s law is enclosed by love. We see this throughout the Old Testament. The Hebrews repeatedly lived against God’s vision for them, knocking against God’s holiness and evoking God’s wrath. But God’s chesed (God’s loving kindness, rooted in the covenant or commitment that God had made to the Hebrews) was more powerful than God’s wrath, and so God repeatedly forgave them. God instituted the patterns of sacrifice to help the Hebrews discover ways to turn from sin and return to God, patterns that facilitated their holiness, so that they could enjoy the fullness of life that God had designed for them.

Wallace says that while God’s love may want to forgive freely and unconditionally, God’s holiness (God’s law) checks God’s love and requires payment for sin. But I suggest that while God’s holiness (God’s law) may want to punish people for their sin, God’s love checks that impulse and reminds God of what is most important to God, namely God’s extravagant love for God’s beloved. And so love triumphs, every time.

The distinction that I am drawing may seem insubstantial – all the elements are present in both Wallace’s and my argument – it is just the order of precedence that has changed. But in fact it makes a tremendous difference. If love is enclosed in law, as Wallace argues, then our relationship with God must be based on fear, because God’s wrath is always only just held in check by God’s love. No matter how significant the cross as an expression of God’s love, wrath is always there. And holiness trumps love, so holiness is the first thing we encounter in God – not love. This is a dangerous God – “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).

On the other hand, if law is enclosed in love, then love is the first thing we encounter in God. And this allows us to approach God in freedom and without fear. As God turns and notices us, God’s immediate response is not one of holiness, but one of love. It is the dominant response that we will enjoy – God turns and smiles and opens his arms. As we enter God’s embrace we will realise that we are not the way God desires us to be, the way God dreams for us to be. Here we are encountering God’s holiness – holiness is most certainly there, but it lies behind and subordinate to love. Within the loving embrace and in a response of love, we desire to be holy as God is holy. Not out of fear, but in loving response, a desire to be like God.

I invite you to weigh up these two approaches to the relationship between God’s love and God’s holiness and decide for yourself. Of course, I hope that the previous 12 days will help you see the strong thread of love that runs through the Old Testament.

Meditation for the Day

Reflect on this theological question – what is central to God? Love or holiness? What have you learned during your life as a child of God? What do you think now?

Prayer for the Day

Holy God, thank you that you have standards for and expectations of me. Help me to not fear your holiness, but to trust your extravagant love for me.

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[1] Wallace, R. (1997). The atoning death of Christ. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, p. 2.

[2] Wallace, p. 2.

[3] Wallace, p. 50.

[4] Wallace, p. 37, emphasis mine.

[5] Wallace, pp. 112-113, emphasis mine.

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 12: Song of Songs

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

Of all the books of the Bible, Solomon’s Song of Songs is surely the one that seems least appropriate. Just eight chapters, 117 verses, it certainly raises one’s pulse. I blush when reading it – the sexual innuendo and sensuality is palpable! The opening lines illustrate: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth – for your love is more delightful than wine. … Take me away with you – let us hurry! Let the king bring me to his chambers” (1:1 & 3). Gracious! How odd that such a text should be included in a book that centres on religion and spirituality, the higher things of life.

At this point, you might want to go and read Song of Songs. You’ll find it in your Old Testament, just before Isaiah, a couple of books after Psalms.

There are several approaches to interpreting Song of Songs, and scholars are often not in agreement on which of these are correct. There does, though, seem to be a general agreement that this is indeed a love poem about sexual love between a woman and man; and that this human love reminds us of the intimate love between us and God.[1]

To be sure, this poem is full of evocative and sensual imagery, drawn from the life world of the ancient Hebrews:

  • Nature. Hills, mountains, gardens, fountains, wells, wind, dew, dawn, moon, sun, stars, pools, fire, flames, rivers.
  • Plants and food. Wine, vineyards, blossoms, cedars, firs, lilies, roses, apple trees, fruit, pomegranates, honey, honeycomb, milk, wheat, palms, clusters of fruit, grapes.
  • Spices and perfume. Perfume, spices, myrrh, incense, henna, nard, saffron, calamus, cinnamon, aloes.
  • Animals. Sheep, goats, mares, doves, gazelles, does, foxes, stags, fawns, lions, leopards, ravens.
  • Jewels. Jewels, earrings, necklaces, gold, silver, purple, scarlet ribbons, chrysolite, ivory, sapphires, marble.
  • Artefacts. Tents, chariots, banquet halls, crowns, towers, shields, doors, latch-openings, troops with banners, goblets.

At the literal level, the importance of Song of Songs is its celebration of sexual love between two people. Its presence in the Bible tells us that intimate love, even ecstatic love, is good and Godly. This is important, because Christianity has often given the impression that it is anti-sex.

This started a few hundred years after Christ, when the early church began to move towards the requirement for celibacy among clergy, a pattern still practised by the Roman Catholic Church. This value expanded also to the general public, with a growing belief that sex was sinful and inevitably led one deeper into sin and away from God. Sex was not appropriate for pleasure, but only for procreation, and even then, not too much of it. Marriage also was acceptable only as a solution for those whose faith was too weak to ensure celibacy. Sex was a threat to faith, not a facilitator of faith. All of this gave sex a bad name among Christians.

While we have probably largely abandoned these ways of thinking, sex remains a bit of a taboo subject in the Church. And many of us have lingering feelings of being dirty in relation to sex. The parental voice – “Don’t touch that!” – is scripted in our brains. And we seldom preach on sex and we don’t discuss it much at church. Think of this, when last did you hear a sermon preached from Song of Songs? And if you have heard one, did it spiritualise the Song or did it talk about sexual relations?

But, when we reflect on the scripture as a whole, we will realise that human sexuality is celebrated throughout the Bible. Genesis 1 and 2 present God explicitly mandating and blessing sexual relations between Adam and Eve, with the hope that they will be fruitful and multiply. Proverbs 5:15-20 and Ecclesiastes 9:9 both celebrate sex – not as a means of procreation, but as a pleasurable relational activity in its own right. Marriage was, indeed, the norm in the Old Testament, with all priests being required to be married. This affirmation of marriage and sex continues in the New Testament, perhaps most vividly shown in Jesus’ first miracle in John’s gospel – the wedding at Cana.

If you believe that canon – the selection of which texts to include in the bible – is inspired by Holy Spirit as much as the individual texts are, then the fact Song of Songs is in our Bible is important! It tells us, among other things, that sex and faith can, do and even should co-exist comfortably, side by side. There is nothing illicit about human love. Loving and being loved is not something we have to do with our eyes closed; or hoping that God has his eyes closed. It is blessed and celebrated and Godly!

But I think there are two other important lessons that we should take from Song of Songs. The first of these is that Song of Songs suggests a parallel between intimate human relationships and our relationship with God. I don’t mean by this that Song of Songs is really a poem about our spiritual relationship with God – that is a form of allegorising that has largely been abandoned over the past hundred or so years. Rather, what I’m suggesting is that one of the reasons why Song of Songs was deemed fit to be included in the Bible is because those who assembled the Old Testament canon recognised that in various ways it mirrors and illuminates our relationship with God.

There is, in our relationship with God, something of a marriage, something of a love affair. The kind of intimacy and losing-of-oneself that we can experience in human love is something like the way we can be intimate with God. We can lose ourselves in God. We can experience a similar kind of union (like, “the two shall become one flesh”) with God. The opening chapters of Hosea, where Hosea writes about his love for his unfaithful wife, are commonly understood to be about God’s love for unfaithful Israel. God says to Hosea, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, thought they turn to other gods” (Hosea 3:1). John the Baptist likens his relationship with Jesus as a bride with her groom (John 3:29-30). Revelation 19:6-10 speaks about a great wedding celebration that is yet to come, when God wraps up earthly history and inaugurates a new and wonderful age. Christ, the Lamb, is the groom, and we will be his bride. 

So, Song of Songs points us towards a level of intimacy in our relationship with God that in various ways is mirrored in our intimate human relationships. Of course, extrapolating from human love to divine love has its problems. Many of us have experienced corrupted human love in the form of abuse and exploitation; and many others of us have experienced inadequate love in the form of tepid and unsatisfying intimacy. But when we imagine the best of human love, as it is depicted in Song of Songs, how can we not think of the perfectly intimate love that we can experience with God?

The second important less that we can take from Song of Songs is this. If you believe that all scripture is God-breathed, then we must accept that Song of Songs is God-breathed. And that means that God’s mind and heart are in some way reflected in the text of Song of Songs. In other words, we gain some insight into the heart of God by reading this poem. And that insight is that love is deeply engrained in the heart of God.

I think we probably all would assent to the idea that God is love. But sometimes we think of this ‘love’ in rather clean, neat, sanitised terms. It’s kind of a handshake love, or a polite hug love. A little bit formal and reserved. Or, we might take it closer in parent-child terms: the kind of hug you’d give your son or daughter – warm and close, but asexual, with definite boundaries.

But Song of Songs suggests that when God thinks of us, it is not the handshake kind of love, nor the polite hug kind; not even the intense parental kind of love. Song of Songs suggests that when God thinks of us – and I know I’m pushing the boundaries here, but don’t stop reading! – it is intense, sensual, passionate, even erotic. I admit that even for me writing this, the idea of God being ‘in love’ with me is hard to get my head around. But since God created sexual love, God must be able to imagine sexual love; and sexual love may well be closer to what God feels for us than parental love. The fact that there is a book in the Bible on sexual love, but not on parental love, is significant, and probably says something important about how God loves us.

If this has gone too far for you, then let us back off it a bit.

What we can take out of Song of Songs, is that God’s love for us is extremely deep and intense, not simply like parental love, but in some way like sexual love. There is a strength and passion to God’s love for us that holds onto us tightly, that is fierce and possessive, that cherishes and celebrates, that desires to be close and exclusive, that delights and laughs, that tangos and twirls. I don’t know about you, but I find myself wanting to respond to a God who loves me like that.

Meditation for the Day

Today’s reflection may have pushed your envelope. Try not to reject them too quickly. Play with these ideas and see where they take you. You may discover a fresh experience of God’s love for you.

Prayer for the Day

God, my lover, I thank you that your love for me is intense and passionate. Let me know that I am your beloved. Kindle in me a similar love for you.

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[1] Kinlaw, D. F. (1991). Song of Songs (in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary). Grand Rapids, MI :Zondervan. 

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 11: The Psalms

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

The Book of Psalms is the hymnal of the Jewish community. It is a collection of private and public songs and poems that express the heart of devoted followers of Yahweh, through the ups and downs of the life of faith. They provide us with poignant and invaluable insights into the inner experiences of the relationship with God in the context of the world around us.

Walter Brueggemann has written a wonderful book called The message of the Psalms.[1] He suggests that there are three main categories of Psalms:

  1. There are Psalms of orientation, which were written from a good place in life, where things are well and God is good. Examples of Psalms of orientation include Psalms 1, 37, 112, 133 and 145.
  2. There are Psalms of disorientation, which were written when life was falling apart, God seemed absent or even hostile, where strong emotions of distress, anger, fear and despair were raging. Some examples of Psalms of disorientation include Psalms 13, 32, 50, 74, 88 and 90.
  3. There are Psalms of reorientation, which were written when we were surprised again by God’s love and faithfulness, and despair recedes and joy emerges like a sunrise. The Psalms of reorientation include Psalms 27, 30, 65, 114 and 117.

Between these three categories are two moves: a move from orientation to disorientation, where we lament the suffering that draws us away from our confidence in God; and a move from disorientation to reorientation, where we rediscover hope. The first move takes us to the cross of Christ, while the second takes us to the resurrection.

One of the things that strikes me about the Psalms is how different they are as a collection of ancient hymns from our contemporary hymns. If you review the songs we sing in church, you will discover that there are very few songs of disorientation. Mostly, we sing praise and worship, which loosely can be thought of as loud, happy songs that celebrate how great God is and quiet, heartfelt songs that meditate on how great God is. We do not have many (if any) songs that focus on anger, fear, despair. We don’t sing songs that shout at or challenge God. We don’t sing songs about how God has abandoned us. Yet, many of the hymns of the Jews were about just these things.

So, we shall give a bit more attention here to the Psalms of disorientation. Not that the Psalms of orientation and reorientation are not important – but it may be helpful to look at those Psalms that say things we don’t often say. And, of course, we need to figure out what this says about God’s love for us.

The main thing I love about these Psalms is that they are honest – sometimes brutally honest! That in itself is refreshing. Sometimes church can become a collection of botoxed faces all covering up the hurt and pain many of us feel inside. I sometimes wonder if I’m the only person struggling with sin, questioning God’s presence, unsure of my faith. Everyone else seems so together. But then other people think I’m always together and superstrong in my faith. If only they knew! It’s so easy for us to be fake with each other. And it is easy to be fake with God too. But the Psalms are not fake – raw, honest expression is what they are about.

The honesty of the Psalms is not unprecedented, though. When I see people for counselling, they are usually painfully honest about the problems in their lives. In the therapeutic context, raw, honest expression is quite appropriate. But perhaps with God we tend to censor ourselves a bit more. After all, it would not be right to offend God. And God is God – God should be spoken to with respect. We should not presume to question or challenge or be angry at God!

But that is exactly what the Psalms do. The Psalmists have learned that with God, anything goes, provided it is honest. They are willing to say anything to God, about God, knowing that so long as it is authentic, God will accept it. God’s broad shoulders are able to carry a lot of bad talk. And lest we forget, the Psalms are not simply private, unspoken thoughts between me and God – they are public, published texts. The Psalms present us with inappropriate thoughts and feelings, both acknowledged and expressed. And God accepts and responds to such expressions. If the Psalmists can do it, shouldn’t we also? The Psalms do not only show what may be done in our relationship with God, but show what we should be doing in our relationship with God. They are our textbook for prayer.

I am often struck by how blunt the Psalms can be:

  • How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? (Psalm 82:2)
  • You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. (Psalm 88:6)
  • Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me? (Psalm 88:14)
  • Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. (Psalm 88:16-17)
  • My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. (Psalm 22:1-2)
  • Hasten, O God, to save me; O LORD, come quickly to help me. (Psalm 70:1)

The bluntness of the Psalms tells us something important about the view the Psalmists had of God. There seems to be a confidence in the Psalmists that one can say anything to God. That we can voice our thoughts without fear of reprisal. The Psalmists see God as accepting, permissive, tolerant, even indulgent. In a word, loving.

Let us consider one short Psalm in full, Psalm 13:

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.

The first stanza is a series of rhetorical questions directed angrily at God. God is accused of being absent, silent, hidden. And the Psalmist grapples with internal distress (thoughts and feelings) and troubles in the world (the enemy triumphs). And these troubles are blamed squarely on God – it is because God has neglected the Psalmist, neglected God’s chesed. No holds are barred here; there is no deference to God.

Now, we must imagine a period of silence between the first and second stanza. A time in which the Psalmist chews over the distress, simmers in the absence of God, works to make sense of the suffering. Such silences are in important part of prayer – at least as important as the words.

Then there is a shift of mood. It’s as if the Psalmist, having ventilated, settles down and begins to turn towards God in petition. See the verbs: look, answer, give light. The petition is to be seen by God: “O Lord, my God, please see me in my distress.” And the Psalmist motivates God to answer the prayer – provides reasons why God ought to display chesed.

And now, we must imagine another period of silence. A long wait. A holding of the breath. A hoping for what we dare not hope. Perhaps, even, the Psalmist goes back to the first stanza and repeats the complaint, and then the plea. It is the day of waiting on the Lord. It can take time.

And then there is another shift of mood. There is here a quiet, simple, pared down trust in God. It starts with a ‘But’, which suggests that the cause of the complaint has not been resolved; but nevertheless, in spite of the complaint, the Psalmist has found faith: I trust… I rejoice… I will sing. Quiet, authentic faith rediscovered, in the midst of suffering. A renewed recognition of the goodness of God, perhaps because of some remembered act of goodness, which gives confidence that God may be good again.

What does all of this mean for us being God’s beloved? God is not so high and mighty that God cannot or will not listen to us in our unadorned distress. God is willing and even keen to hear us as we are, warts and all. God does not become angry when we speak out at God. Instead, when we are honest, even angrily or despairingly honest, God meets us. When we say it like it is, we open a space in our hearts to experience something else that is like it is, and that is God.

In my own faith journey with God, I have increasingly come to experience that what God most wants from me in my ongoing relationship with God is authenticity – for me to be who I really am, with all my imperfections, emotions, doubts and questions. Good relationship involves the meeting of two authentic, whole persons – as soon as one or other pretends to be something other than what they are, the relationships becomes fake and, ultimately, unsatisfying. Why should it be any different with God? God loves us, and thus accepts us, wholly, as we are, and invites us to be whole and authentic, not fake. And if that authenticity is angry or despairing or accusing, then God accepts that too. This is how those who love each other treat each other.

Meditation for the Day

How authentic are you with God? Do you say it as it is, even when it’s not pretty? Or are you trying to present a good face to God? What will it take to be truly honest with God?

Prayer for the Day

Oh Lord, what I am really feeling today is… What I really think about you is… I need you to… Help me to trust in you.

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[1] Brueggemann, W. (1984). The message of the Psalms: A theological commentary. Minneapolis, MI: Augsberg.

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 10: Persistent Love

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

Many of us have a view of the Old Testament as portraying a God who is wrathful, violent and primitive. I had a friend who decided to stop reading the Old Testament entirely because he found the God presented there incompatible with the God that Christ knew. While his behaviour might be quite extreme, this is probably a view that is common to many, perhaps even most Christians. And truth be told, many of us have read little of the Old Testament.

So, one day I decided to start reading the Old Testament to hear the historical narrative and to see what this Old Testament God was all about. I opened at Genesis 1 and kept reading until I got to the New Testament. The thing that stood out most strongly for me from this, was that the God of the Old Testament was a loving God. I could see the angry God bits – they surely are there. But what was more dominant to me, was the loving God bits. And in particular, I was struck by the persistence of God’s love. In the face of repeated failure by the nations of Israel and Judah, God continues to love, and to love, and to love. Despite the persistent failure of God’s people to maintain their covenant with God, God remains faithful and engaged. God never gives up on them. If the Old Testament narrative as a whole taught me anything about God, it is that God persists in love.

Let’s pick up the story in 2 Chronicles after Solomon’s death. Solomon’s son Rehoboam succeeds him (chapter 10). Jeroboam and the people of Israel go to Rehoboam and ask for a lightening of the heavy labour burden Solomon had placed on them. After receiving sage advice from the elders, Rehoboam decides to follow the advice of some younger men who urge him to impose even heavier demands. Naturally, the people turned their backs on him, leading to the split of the kingdom between Israel in the north and the much smaller Judah in the south. Nevertheless, Rehoboam was a wise king in many ways and Judah flourished.

But in chapter 12, we learn that he “abandoned the law of the Lord” (12:1) and as a result “Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem” (12:2). One of Rehoboam’s prophets gives him a word from the Lord, “You have abandoned me; therefore, I now abandon you to Shishak” (12:5). God’s judgement has come on Rehoboam. Immediately, Rehoboam and his leaders “humbled themselves and said, ‘The Lord is just’” (12:6). In other words, Rehoboam grants that God is right in judging him. God sees their repentance and relents in judgement, “My wrath will not be poured out on Jerusalem through Shishak” (12:7). However, there is a lesson to be learned, “They will, however, become subject to him, so that they may learn the difference between serving me and serving the kings of other lands” (12:8).

This episode is a good example of God being “slow to anger”, which we read yesterday. God was certainly angered by Rehoboam’s abandoning of his faith. But God acts with restraint. And as soon as Rehoboam repents, God relents. The Chronicler summarises, “Because Rehoboam humbled himself, the Lord’s anger turned from him, and he was not totally destroyed. Indeed, there was some good in Judah” (12:12). Rehoboam lived out his life as a capable king. His son Abijah succeeded Rehoboam and was a good king (chapter 13). Abijah’s son Asa succeeded him and reigned in peace for ten years (chapter 14). In one battle, Asa prayed, “O Lord, you are our God; do not let man prevail against you” (14:11). His faith won him the battle. Asa’s son Jehoshaphat succeeded him and reigned for 35 years as a Godly king (chapters 17-20).

Jehoshaphat’s son Jehoram took over next (chapter 21) and aligned with the apostate Israelites. We get the first of nine iterations in 2 Chronicles of, “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord” (21:6). However, “because of the covenant the Lord had made with David, the Lord was not willing to destroy the house of David” (21:7) – here we see God once again, ‘slow to anger’ and exercising his side of the chesed agreement. It would seem appropriate if God had decided to wipe out Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah – they had, after all, forsaken God and their covenant with God. But God remains faithful and engaged. God does not give up.

God shows this engagement by stirring up the Philistines and Arabs, who invade Judah and carry off most of Jehoram’s family and Jehoram himself is afflicted with a horrible and fatal bowel disease. We are told, “he passed away, to no one’s regret” (21:20). Jehoram’s last remaining son, Ahaziah, took over and walked in his father’s footsteps and died (22:9). Ahaziah’s mother, Athalia, a worshipper of Baal, took the throne for six years and endeavoured to exterminate David’s descendents (chapter 23). The high priest, Jehoiada, having protected Ahaziah’s son Joash, organises a people’s rebellion, kills Athalia and crowns Joash (just seven years old) and reinstates the worship of God (chapter 23).

Now, this may not sound like loving behaviour from God – everyone who stands against God suffers and dies. However, it is striking that God remains actively engaged and present in the events of Judah. God never folds his arms, so to speak, or closes his eyes or reads a book. God continues to send prophets to warn the kings and enemies to defeat and humble them. This is always with a clear intention to turn the people back to God. Heavy handed they may be, but the purpose is to reconcile not obliterate.

We see this pattern of God’s blessing when the people follow God’s ways and God’s discipline when they do not through the next few kings. Joash walked for most of his 40 years as king in the ways of God, but forsook God and killed the prophet God sent to warn him (chapter 24). So, God’s judgement fell on Joash in the form of the Aramean army, who executed Joash. Joash’s son, Amaziah, takes over, follows in the ways of God and wins his first battle, then engages in idolatry and suffers defeat at the hands of the Israelites and dies (chapter 27). His son, Uzziah, follows a similar pattern of initial devotion and success, and later abandonment of God and untimely death (chapter 26). And so it continues through Jotham (chapter 27) and Ahaz (chapter 28).

Hezekiah (chapters 29-32) takes over from his father Ahaz and sets out to purify the temple, to renew the covenant with God and to celebrate a massive Passover festival. Hezekiah prayed for the people, “May the Lord, who is good, pardon everyone who sets his heart on seeking God” (30:18-19). The Chronicler says, “And so he prospered” (31:21). Hezekiah was faithful to the covenant and God bestows blessing and chesed on Hezekiah and the people of Judah. Sadly, in his last days, Hezekiah’s pride took him over and the wrath of God fell on him (chapter 32).

Manasseh took over from his father and “did evil in the eyes of the Lord” (33:2) leading Judah back into idolatry. God spoke to Manasseh and the people of Judah, endeavouring to reconcile them to God, but they did not listen (33:10). So, God brought the Assyrians against Judah and Manasseh was taken into captivity. But Manasseh repented and humbled himself, “and when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea.. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God” (33:13). God here continues to engage, chastising wayward behaviour, responding positively and quickly to repentance and rewarding Godly behaviour.

Manasseh’s son, Amon, later took over and did evil in the eyes God and was subsequently killed (chapter 33). Josiah then took up the reigns and “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (34:2). Like Hezekiah, he purified the land of idolatry and moreover recovered the lost Book of the Law. After reading it, he called the people of Judah together and they renewed their covenant with God and celebrated the Passover in Jerusalem (chapters 34-35). He had a successful reign, was blessed by God and made a lasting contribution to Jewish faith, which sustained them through the exile. Four kings reigned after Josiah, until eventually Nebuchadnezzar invaded, sacked Jerusalem and took the people of Judah into captivity in Persia (chapter 36).

I agree that this may not sound like the most loving and friendly of relations. But I hope you can recognise that through all the ups and downs of the history of Judah (and a similar pattern can be found in Israel, as recounted in Kings) God remains engaged. God never gives up on the people of God. God repeatedly sends prophets to speak sense into those who deviate from the path of righteousness. God is quick to forgive and restore and bless. Even when God sends judgement it is designed to elicit repentance and a return to faith. Although we stopped at the exile in Persia, we could have continued, seeing God’s persistent faithfulness towards those in exile and their subsequent return to Jerusalem through the edict issued by Cyrus at God’s instigation (2 Chronicles 36:22-23).

In God’s relationship with you and with me, God always remains engaged. God’s love persists. There are times when we are turned open-hearted towards God and God is delighted and blesses us – a happy parent. But there are other times when we turn away, we ignore, we close our hearts and stop our ears, we transfer out love elsewhere, we forget. This disturbs and upsets God. Of course it does – God wants uninterrupted fellowship with us. But God does not turn away or forget us. God remains always engaged, always hoping for a breakthrough. God may send or permit life experiences that may turn us back to God, and some of these may involve suffering. These too are designed to draw us to God, to soften our hearts, to open our eyes, to restore fellowship.

God’s love persists, no matter what.

Meditation for the Day

Reflect on the persistence of God’s love in the Old Testament history of the Jewish people. Think about your own relationship with God – are you persisting with God right now? How about last year? What does it mean for you that God persists with you, even when you don’t persist with God?

Prayer for the Day

My God, I thank you for the persistence of your love for me. That even when I have lost sight of you, you do not lose sight of me. That you will try and try and try again to get through to me. Please don’t ever give up on me, no matter how hard I try to make you.

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