(1 John 4:19-21)
21. God First Loved Us
Let us love, because he first loved us. How would we be able to love if he hadn't first loved us? It's by loving that we became his friends, even though it was as his enemies that he loved us in order that we might become his friends. He loved us first and gave us the gift of loving him. By loving we became beautiful. What does a man who is ugly and misshapen do if he loves a beautiful woman? And what does an ugly woman do if she loves a handsome man? Can loving make her beautiful? Or can the man by loving become handsome? He's in love with a beautiful woman, but when he looks at himself in the mirror, he's ashamed to show his face to the beauty he loves. What can he do to become handsome? Should he wait for good looks to come? Waiting brings only old age, which makes him uglier. There's nothing he can do, there's no advice you can give him except to restrain himself and not to venture to love someone so much better looking than himself.
Through iniquity our souls, my friends, are loathsome. In loving God they become beautiful. What a love it is that makes the lover beautiful! God is always beautiful, never ugly, never changeable. The One who is always beautiful loved us first, and what were we then when he loved us if not loathsome and ugly? But it wasn't to leave us loathsome that he loved us, but to change us and to make the ugly beautiful. How do we become beautiful? It's by loving him who is always beautiful. As love grows in you so does beauty, because love is the beauty of the soul.
Let us love, because he first loved us. Listen to Paul: "But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us," a righteous man dying for the unrighteous, the
GOD FIRSTLOVED US /
beautiful dying for the loathsome. Where do we find that Jesus is beautiful? Look in the psalm: "You are the fairest of the children of men; grace is poured out upon your lips." What is the source of his beauty? 'You are the fairest of the children of men" because "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." When he took flesh it's as if he took on the loathsomeness that is our mortal state, in order to conform and identify himself with us, to excite us to love an inner beauty. We've found Jesus beautiful, "fairest of the children of men"! Where do we find that he is loathsome and ugly? Question the prophet Isaiah: *And we saw him, and he had no beauty nor comeliness."
Here are twin pipes that seem to be out of harmony, but still one Spirit breathes into them both. Don't turn away from the difficulty but apply yourselves. Let us question the apostle Paul, and listen to him explain the harmony of the twin pipes. "Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." There you see "the fairest of the children of men." "But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men; and he was found in human form." "He had no beauty nor comeliness," and this was so that he might give them to you. What beauty and comeliness does he give you? Love. You already have this beauty. But don't look at yourself or you'll lose what you've received. Look toward him who made you beautiful. Be beautiful so that he'll love you. Turn your whole attention toward him, run toward him, seek his embraces, fear being separated from him. Have in yourselves that "pure fear that endures forever." Let us love, because he first loved us.
If anyone says, I love God. . . . Ask the people you meet whether they love God. They speak right up and profess, "I love him; he knows it." But you can ask in another way: If anyone says, I love-God, and hates his brother, he is a liar. How do you show that he's a liar? Listen: For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? What then? Do those who love a sister or brother love God too? They must of necessity love God, they must of necessity love love itself. Is it possible for them to love a sister or brother and not love love? No, they have to love love. And so, because they love love, do they therefore love God? Of course! In loving love they love God. Or have you forgotten what we read a little while back, that "'God is love"? If God is love, those who love love, love God. Love your sisters and brothers, then, and be at peace. You can't say, "I love my sister or my brother, but I don't love God." Just as you're lying if you say I love God when you don't love your sister or brother, so you're deceiving yourselves when you say, "T love my sister or brother," if you don't love God. If you love a sister or brother, you must love love itself. But "'God is love." Therefore whoever loves a sister or brother must of necessity love God.
But if you don't love the sister or brother you see, how can you love the God you don't see? How can people not see God?
It's because they don't have love. And the reason they don't have love is because they don't love their sister or brother. Therefore the reason they don't see God is because they lack love. If they have love they see God, because ''God is love," and their inner eyes are purified more and more by love, so that they may see that unchangeable Being whose presence brings them unending joy and whom they will enjoy forever with the angels. But they must run now, so that one day they will rejoice in their own country. They aren't to love their journey or their route; they should find everything bitter except the One who calls them, until they hold him fast and say with the psalmist, '""You have destroyed all those who commit fornication against you." And who are they who commit fornication?
It's those who turn aside and love the world.
And what are you to do? What follows in the psalm: "But for me it is good to hold fast unto God." That is my whole good: to hold fast to God, without asking for recompense. For if you ask, '*Why are you holding fast to God?" and someone says, "So that he'll give to me. . . " ask, **What will he give'to you? It's God who made heaven, God who made the earth; what is he going to give to you? You are already holding fast to him; find something better, and he would give it to you!"
For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also. How grandly you say that you love God; but you hate your brother! Murderer, how can you love God? Didn't you hear earlier in this letter that "everyone who hates his brother is a murderer''? You say, "But certainly I love God, even though I hate my brother." And I answer, Certainly you do not love God, if you hate your brother!" I bring another proof. John has said that Christ gave us a commandment, "that we love one another." How can you love God when you hate his commandment? Does anyone say, "I love our ruler but I hate his laws?" This is how the ruler perceives whether you love him: if his laws are observed throughout his empire. What is our Ruler's law? "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." You tell me that you love Christ. Keep his law, then, and love your sister and brother. If you don't love your sister and brother, how can you love him whose commandment you defy?
My friends, I never get tired of speaking about love in the name of Christ. As for you, the more eager you are for it, the more hope I have that it is increasing in you, and is casting out fear, so that there may remain that pure fear that endures forever. Let us bear this world and its tribulations and the scandals of our temptations. Let us never turn back from our way. Let us hold to the unity of the Church, to Christ, to love. Let us not be separated from the members of his Spouse or from the faith, so that we may be glorified in his presence. In this way we will abide securely in him, by faith now, and later by sight. It is his great pledge we have, the gift of the Holy Spirit.