The wrong god means love remains frail, fickle, or a fiction. The right God means love is the most reliable thing in all the world.
Since I was young, I’ve enjoyed biographies. It’s probably my favorite type of literature. I think it’s fun to step into the lives of others. One thing modern biographies especially like to focus on is childhood. In biographies of villains, biographers tend to highlight cruelty or indifference as cause for the subject’s later misdeeds. In biographies of heroic figures, authors point out the love and encouragement that allowed the subject to blossom. While this can sometimes be overdone, it does drive home a demonstrable pattern: children who grow up loved tend toward freedom and flourishing. They feel emboldened to venture and adventure. On the other hand, children who grow up without love or with some sort of contingent love tend toward servitude and stunted development. They are afraid to venture and adventure lest they lose their love or never attain it at all.
How about you? Do you feel loved? Do you feel emboldened to venture and adventure, or does life instead feel like a grind, a desperate pursuit of approval and affection? How do you see your divine parent? Does he freely love, or does he withhold love until you earn it, or never give it at all? This will make a great difference in your life. We all have gods, whether we recognize them or not, and our gods, or God, form us. The wrong god means love remains frail, fickle, or a fiction. The right God means love is the most reliable thing in all the world. We do well, then, to consider our childhood, so to speak. We do well to do that, though, not by looking at the child but at the parent.
The chief part of the Christian life is growing down.
St. Paul writes, “For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:14-15). God is the source of all family, and in God is true family. Christ has become our brother to make his Father our Father. He’s taught us to pray to the same end with confidence and not with fear. And the same Christ who gives us a Father also gives us the Spirit, who strengthens us with his power in our inner being. The Spirit does this so that Christ can dwell in us through faith; so intimate is the relationship between God and his children. And Christ does this for a very specific reason: he does this so that we will be “rooted and grounded in love” and bear fruit in the same.
We sometimes think of the Christian life as growing up. There’s something to this, but this shouldn’t be the main picture. The chief part of the Christian life is growing down. Like a tree, we are as strong as our roots. Like branches, we are as strong as the vine. And God’s love isn’t fickle. His love isn’t here today and gone tomorrow. His love for us began before all time and will continue into eternity. It’s unlike any love in this world, which is full of many great loves—the stuff of movies, novels, and songs. All of these loves, however, are only great so long as they conform to this greatest love: the love of God for sinners.
God hasn’t only called us into his family. He’s called all the saints, those set aside for his purposes, made holy through his works. And the chief work of this life isn’t growing in God’s love—it doesn’t become greater or lesser—but growing in our comprehension of this love. Each day is a new love lesson. Each year is another year to let that love sink in as we “comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18-19).
Unbelief is futile because it works for what God has already given or begrudges what God has never withheld.
Every sin is the product of unbelief. Luther makes that clear with his explanation of the Ten Commandments, which God himself made clear with the First Commandment and Jesus’ famous summary of the ten in two. And unbelief is the work of the unloved, of those who reject or are unaware of God’s divine affection toward them in Christ. Unbelief is futile because it works for what God has already given or begrudges what God has never withheld.
God loves you because he does. When you forget that, you live like it. When you remember it, God produces fruit through you. Much of life is a mixture of both, but it’s not intended to remain that way. The saints are called to grow, not in business, but in comprehension. The saints don’t become more lovable. The saints become more aware that they are loved.
We are in the Epiphany season. We remember the gifts of the wise men who welcomed the newborn King. We ought not forget, however, that he who receives gifts much more importantly gives them. This whole world and our every breath is a gift. All we have and are is a gift of his love.
In this season, we see an example of this giving as Jesus rescues the groom at Cana, giving him new wine as his own.
Just like today, weddings were a big deal in the ancient world. They could run on for days. They didn’t have the assortment of beverages we do. Wine was a staple, and the couple was running out, which would have been a disaster. This would have meant humiliation for the groom at what should have been the high point of his life. Imagine the look of disappointment on his bride’s face and the judgment of the guests. Mary, however, knew she was loved, and she knew who loved her. So she went to God, who just so happened to be her Son, with a request. At first, his reply seemed harsh, but she knew him well, and so she told the servants to listen to him if he said anything because all God ever need do is speak.
The master of the banquet went to the groom and commended him on this new wine as if it were his own doing. God does the same with us.
Jesus provided the new wine, the best wine, but didn’t steal the couple’s limelight. He performed his first miracle but left credit for the groom. The master of the banquet went to the groom and commended him on this new wine as if it were his own doing. God does the same with us. Jesus provides his righteousness, and God credits it to us. God is love and gives loving gifts, not for his own good, but for ours. He gives himself because true love is self-giving. He seeks no reward because true love doesn’t desire one. He gets lost in us and so sets us free to get lost in others.
St. Paul tells us that the love of Christ “surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19). This love isn’t data, although we do learn about it. This love is Christ himself, given for sinners, our brother, advocate, and friend. This is Christ who is able to do “far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Eph. 3:20).
