On Love, Fear and Hate

A LOVING GOD SENT CHRIST TO RECONCILE US

If God is the source of all love, then Jesus is the perfect example of love. A loving heavenly Father sent Christ to reconcile us to God. 1 John 4:10 affirms: “Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Paul Orjala, the late Professor of Missiology at Nazarene Theological Seminary, taught: “There is no Christianity without Christ.” To expand upon his observation, we could add: “There’s no Christ without the Cross.” Paul spoke of the “mystery of God” and here’s how he summed it up in 1 Corinthians 2:2 – “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” In her hymn, “All for Jesus,” Mary James puts it like this:

Since my eyes were fixed on Jesus,
I’ve lost sight of all beside;
so enchained my spirit’s vision,
looking at the Crucified.

God desires relationship with us. The lesson of Genesis 3 in the Garden of Eden is that our disobedience created a gulf between us and God. The Cross is the bridge across the great divide. God takes the first step toward us, making a way for us to return. It’s a costly way, as seen in the term “atoning sacrifice.” Jesus becomes a willing sacrifice upon the altar of the Cross so that our sins can be forgiven. And why did he do this? Listen to the last phrase of 1 John 4:9 – “…so that we might live through him.” Sin is the sleep of death; reconciliation to God is waking up to new life in Christ, life both abundant and eternal.

Keith Green (see above photo) composed and performed many Christian songs during the 1970s and early 1980s. Keith and his wife, Melody, were saved out of the drug scene in southern California. His song, “Your Love Broke Through,” beautifully describes his experience:

“All my life, I’ve been searching

For that crazy missing part,

And with one touch you just rolled away

The stone that held my heart.

And now I see that the answer

Was as easy as just asking you in,

And I’m so sure

I could never doubt

Your gentle touch again.

It’s like the power of the wind!

Like waking up from the longest dream

How real it seemed!

Until your love broke through.

I’ve been lost in a fantasy

That blinded me,

Until your love broke through!”

-in Melody Green and David Hazard, No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2008; revised edition), 210.

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