The Gift of God’s Love
“God is love. God is a lover, not a manager, businessman, accountant, owner, or puppet-master. What He wants from us first of all is not a technically correct performance but our heart… [C. S. Lewis states in Mere Christianity] ‘We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain sort.’
The point is amazingly simple, which is why so many of us just don’t get it. Heaven is free because love is free. It is ours for the taking. The taking is faith. ‘If you believe, you will be saved.’ It is really that simple. If I offer you a gift, you have it if and only if you have the faith to take it.
The primacy of faith does not discount or denigrate works but liberates them. Our good works can now also be free―free from the worry and slavery and performance anxiety of having to buy Heaven with them. Our good works can now flow from genuine love of neighbor*, not fear of Hell. Nobody wants to be loved merely as a means to build up the lover’s merit pile. That attempt is ridiculous logically as well as psychologically. How much does Heaven cost? A thousand good works? Would 999 not do, then? The very question shows its absurdity. That absurdity comes from forgetting that God is love.
God practices what He preaches. He loves the sinner and hates only the sin. The father of the prodigal son did not say to his repentant son: ‘You are welcome home, Son, but of course you must now pay me back for all the harm you’ve done and all the money you’ve wasted.’ He didn’t even say, ‘I hope you’ve learned your lesson.’ He simply fell on his neck, kissed him, and wept.
The righteous older brother was scandalized by this apparently unjust justification of the sinner―just as the day-long laborers in another of Christ’s strange and wonderful parables were scandalized when the master of the vineyard gave the same wage he had given them to the late arrivals. So too the people who heard Jesus forgive the repentant thief on the cross were probably scandalized by the words: ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’ They probably thought, ‘But what about all his past sins? What about justice? What about punishment?’ The answer is found in I John 4:18: ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment.’
God cannot be outdone in loving us lavishly. No one can even imagine how loving God is: ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.’ (I Cor. 2:9). The prodigal son did not find himself in the servants’ quarters but in the banquet hall. He had hoped his father might consent to take him back as one of his hired servants, but he was dressed in festal robes and fed the fatted calf.
The whole point of justification by faith is God’s scandalous, crazy, and wonderful gift of love.”
~Peter Kreeft
*Because we receive a new kind of love from God (agape), we can love our neighbor in a new way.
The point is amazingly simple, which is why so many of us just don’t get it. Heaven is free because love is free. It is ours for the taking. The taking is faith. ‘If you believe, you will be saved.’ It is really that simple. If I offer you a gift, you have it if and only if you have the faith to take it.
The primacy of faith does not discount or denigrate works but liberates them. Our good works can now also be free―free from the worry and slavery and performance anxiety of having to buy Heaven with them. Our good works can now flow from genuine love of neighbor*, not fear of Hell. Nobody wants to be loved merely as a means to build up the lover’s merit pile. That attempt is ridiculous logically as well as psychologically. How much does Heaven cost? A thousand good works? Would 999 not do, then? The very question shows its absurdity. That absurdity comes from forgetting that God is love.
God practices what He preaches. He loves the sinner and hates only the sin. The father of the prodigal son did not say to his repentant son: ‘You are welcome home, Son, but of course you must now pay me back for all the harm you’ve done and all the money you’ve wasted.’ He didn’t even say, ‘I hope you’ve learned your lesson.’ He simply fell on his neck, kissed him, and wept.
The righteous older brother was scandalized by this apparently unjust justification of the sinner―just as the day-long laborers in another of Christ’s strange and wonderful parables were scandalized when the master of the vineyard gave the same wage he had given them to the late arrivals. So too the people who heard Jesus forgive the repentant thief on the cross were probably scandalized by the words: ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’ They probably thought, ‘But what about all his past sins? What about justice? What about punishment?’ The answer is found in I John 4:18: ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment.’
God cannot be outdone in loving us lavishly. No one can even imagine how loving God is: ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.’ (I Cor. 2:9). The prodigal son did not find himself in the servants’ quarters but in the banquet hall. He had hoped his father might consent to take him back as one of his hired servants, but he was dressed in festal robes and fed the fatted calf.
The whole point of justification by faith is God’s scandalous, crazy, and wonderful gift of love.”
~Peter Kreeft
*Because we receive a new kind of love from God (agape), we can love our neighbor in a new way.
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