Handley C. G. Moule’s words about ”God is love—1 John 4:8, 16“:
“God is Love” [1 John 4:16]. Is the text then, after all, out of tune with the title? “God is Love.” The words are, as we have said, sublimely simple; yes, they are level to the heart of the little child. But then, they are sublimely simple. When we ponder them, there is a radiant depth in each, clear but unfathomable. Who can spell out all that is hidden in God? Who can analyze to all its depths what in regard of Him, is meant by LOVE? Who can see all the splendor shining from that link of life between them, “God is Love”? For it tells us that the Eternal does not only know what love means, nor only feel it as an emotion coming over Him. He is Love; it is His Essence, it is His Nature, it is His Life. Before all thoughts of loving action going out from Him stands here this radiant truth that Love lives and breathes forever in Him, as it were His very Self.
Now is not this almost a confession already of the glory of the Holy Trinity? For the faith of the Trinity is but the faith that the inner Life of the Godhead is no awful Solitude, but a blissful Society which yet is One. It says that there is a glorious sphere within the “One Eternal” for mutual Affection, infinite in measure, absolute in tenderness and joy. It tells us that at the heart and at the head of the universe of being there lives, and wills, and acts, not a remote Unit, but a gracious Unity, within whose bright Essence, “dark with excess of bright,” Love is always meeting Love. And it bids therefore, not the little child only but the life-worn man, conscious of sin, of sorrow, of the grave, look upwards towards the Infinite with a certainty, deep as existence, that He can indeed be trusted and be loved, for He is Love.So God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit we adore,
A sea of life and love unknown,
Without a bottom or a shore.
Thoughts for Sundays, 239-40, bold words were in italics in the original
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
