Love of course has many meanings, not all of them equally helpful. And there is a deeper love, a love beyond and behind natural loves, which creates and permeates the universe the love of the divine being, ‘the love which moves the stars’. We are created in love, by love, and for love. Yet perhaps in the end it’s love that guides and directs the universe and history. Love cannot make others respond to it or reciprocate it. Love can move mountains, break down mighty walls and melt icy hearts, yet cannot force the weakest will to change or do anything it can only woo, not coerce. It’s the greatest power in all the worlds, yet also the weakest. Love has qualities that transcend the physical, and anyone who’s felt its force will laugh at the idea that it’s nothing more than an evolutionary strategy to ensure our genes’ survival. Love is real, but it cannot be measured, manufactured or destroyed. He is not primarily force, or power, or wrath. Love is who he is that’s how he chooses to make himself known. It’s not that God is merely loving, or lovely, or love-like. ‘God is love’ is a revolutionary, even shocking statement. Love is not merely one of God’s attributes it is perhaps the profoundest statement of who he, of his most fundamental nature and character. Light, life and love: for John at least, these three ideas above all sum up God’s essence, his nature, his reality. They’re based on three statements about God made in the gospel and letters associated with John the mystic apostle. You could call love, life and light the ‘Johannine trinity’ (I prefer ‘the Johnny three’ □ ). They don’t map exactly, but broadly speaking light relates to reality, love to relationship, and life to redemption. So reality, relationship and redemption are at the heart of what it’s all about for me.Īnother pleasingly alliterative way of expressing these interconnected ideas is light, life and love.
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