The Revelation of God's Love in Jesus Christ
The Love of God in the Qur'an and the Bible
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We saw earlier that love must be expressive and, in particular, that God must manifest his love for us in some way if we are to love him with all our hearts in return. Now the Christian Bible gives such a manifestation of God's love - indeed the greatest possible expression of it that men could ever expect from him. In the following passage this revelation of God's love is fully set out:
"Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us". 1 John 4:7-11.
The striking feature of this passage is the frequent recurrence of the words "God" and "love". The writer is so persuaded of the inseparable link between the two that he sums it up in these words: God IS love (1 John 4:8). This means that right in the very heart of God's own personal interest in men rests the deepest possible affection and concern for them. The love of God in this case is clearly not to be found solely outside of himself in "fruit and benefit" as al-Ghazzali suggests. On the contrary it is that love which exists within the very nature of God and it is the love of God himself that is revealed to men in the Gospel. One can safely say that more is said of God's love in this one short passage in the Bible than in the whole of the Qur'an. What was it that persuaded the Apostle John of the intensity of God's love for mankind? To what does he appeal to prove this magnificent love of God towards men of which he speaks? What had God ever done to manifest his love in such a way that he could be spoken of as the epitome of love itself? It is simply this
"In this is love, not that we love God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation of our sins". 1 John 4:10
Herein lies the proof of the depth of God's love towards us. He has done the greatest thing he could possibly do to reveal his love for us - he gave willingly his very own Son Jesus Christ to die on a cross for our sins to redeem us to himself. No greater proof of God's love can be given to mankind than this. It is no wonder that John does not appeal to anything further to make his point. He has given the very best possible proof of God's love towards men.
How may we understand the depth of this love? Let us go back in history to the prophet Abraham who was commanded by God to give his only son in a sacrifice. If we ask why God chose to ask his son of him rather than his cattle, goods or land, the answer must be that a man's own son is very different to these other things for he proceeds from his father and is part of the father's very own being. He is accordingly dearer to his father's heart than anything else. Therefore the best way that God could test Abraham's love for him was to command that he sacrifice his son for him. For surely, if Abraham would give his son for God, he would give him all things. This is precisely what mankind can, discover about God's love for the human race in the gift of his Son Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for the remission of our sins:
"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?" Romans 8:32
Furthermore we may well ask whether God would ever ask any man to express his love for him in a greater, more heart- rending way than God was ever disposed to show his love for men. When God asked Abraham to give his son, was this not surely a sign that a reciprocal demonstration of God's own love would follow in the gift of his Son for us? If not then we must conclude that one man gave a greater proof of his love of God than God has ever given for the whole of mankind in return. The thought is unthinkable. God would never ask any man to do more for him than he was willing to do for men himself. And the wondrous manifestation of his love in giving all he had in the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ is proof sufficient of this.
What better proof can we want of God's love for us? He has given his Son for us - one who proceeds from him - surely, then, he will give us all things with him. If he has, in his deep love, given us the greatest of all gifts, we must assuredly know that he will give us all lesser things as well. Furthermore we see that Abraham, a lowly creature, was prepared to give one like himself for the eternal God of the universe. It was his duty to obey any command God gave him. But what duty was imposed on the eternal Father of the heavens when he gave his Son - one like himself in every way for lowly men on earth? What other than infinite love could have motivated such action?
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life". John 3:16
The Father did not stand idly by as men put his Son to an awful death, nor did he in an act of cruelty make an innocent victim of him. Oh no! Both the Father and the Son, in one united display of wondrous divine love for mankind, endured separation from each other to ensure that many men might be saved from an eternal separation in hell and be brought instead into eternal communion and glory with them. Nothing else but love could have endured the cross with all its horrors. Here we have a visible expression of God's love for us. In the gift of his Son he has given a full manifestation of the depth of his love towards us:
"God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us". Romans 5:8
"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might live through him" . 1 John 4:9
Surely men can now respond to God with unlimited I love in their hearts. Here is the glory of the Biblicalo revelation of the love of God in Jesus Christ. It is hardly surprising that the Qur'an has so little to say about the love of God when it denies that God gave his Son to redeem us from our sins. It has denied the greatest manifestation of this love that could ever have " been given by God to men. As Jesus said:
"Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends". John 15:13
This is the greatest and most abiding form of love - love that is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6) and cannot be overcome by it. Such love was revealed in Jesus Christ when he willingly laid down his life:
"When Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end". John 13:1
Here we have proof, not only of God's inestimable love, but also of the fact that we can depend on it forever. The true Christian will never know a whit of God's wrath for he is the eternal object of his immeasurable love. The willing gift of his own Son was perfect proof of the truth of this promise:
"I have loved you with an everlasting love". Jeremiah 31:3
The cross of Jesus Christ was a magnificent proof of the eternal love of both the Father and the Son for mankind. Each was prepared to endure the loss of the other's presence - a circumstance which we cannot possibly estimate in our minds - so that we might never be lost. Not only so, but it is little wonder that after the death of Jesus and his resurrection to life again three days later God is only known as Father in the Holy Scriptures. This inexpressible gift shows us more than anything else ever could that God is indeed willing to become our Father. Through the cross he has redeemed all true believers in his Son to himself and has made possible even now the forgiveness of all our offences so that we might be transformed from children of wrath, which we are by nature, into children of God.
Not only has God become our Father through that which Jesus has done for us but, being the eternal Son from the Father, he has in fact revealed God himself to us as well:
"He who has seen me has seen the Father". John 14:9
Therefore, not only do we see God's love made manifest in the gift of his Son Jesus Christ but we also have the glorious privilege of seeing in him the very personification of God's love. We are able, in all that Jesus said and did, to obtain a very full knowledge of the love of God for us. For no man ever loved as this man did. No deity of any other religion compares with him in his inexhaustible love for men. He lived for them and he died for them. His whole life was a living expression of love. He never once avenged himself on his enemies but loved them to such an extent that he even prayed on the cross for them in these words:
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do". Luke 23:34
He gave his disciples such a remarkable revelation of love in all that they saw him do in the three years he was with them that he was able to say to them on the last night that he was with them:
"A new commandment I give to you; that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another". John 13:34
He ordered them to love each other as he had loved them. The world had never seen such depth of love as it saw in this man. Therefore, when he commanded his disciples to love one another in the same way that he had loved them, it was indeed a new commandment because the standard of this love was such as the world had never known before. Even others, who were not his disciples, when they saw how he grieved over the loss of one of his followers through an untimely death, said:
"See how he loved him!" John 11:36
We have, therefore, in the life of Jesus a wondrous example of the measure of the Father's love for us. As Ramsey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, once put it so well: God is Christlike, and in him there is no un-Christlikeness at all. This is an incredible statement. Yet in no other way can the extent and wonder of God's love properly be expressed. The Father in heaven is the One whose image the Son bears (as we say 6 in a proverb, "Like Father, like son") - therefore that love which was so great which the Son fully expressed in his life and death was nothing more or less than the Father's own love for us. Not only so, but the Son lived among men and was known by them. Surely, therefore, if the Father was revealed in the Son, then anyone who truly knew him knew his Father also (John 14:7). This means that we can not only have the magnificent privilege of beholding the love of God for us in the gift of his Son - a fact which demands the only reasonable response that men can give to this revelation of love, namely that we love him in return with all our hearts - but also that we can have the wondrous joy of actually KNOWING the love of God within our very own hearts. God himself has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ - by this we can not only perceive the expression of his love for us but also gain opportunity to actually experience that love within us. This leads us to our last consideration - the way by which God's love has become mutual between him and men - something which not only gives us potential to express heartfelt love for God but even to develop it to the full through the experience of his love for us in our own hearts.