The Beatles had a song about love – What this world needs is love, love, love. How true!  We can pretend to be happy and joyful – we can drink a lot, laugh a lot, smile a lot, but a famine of love is harder to hide.  We can also pretend that everything is  reasonably peaceful. Ask most miserable people how they are and they will curtly reply, Fine.  But again our lack of love is harder to hide.

I know that there are a lot of substitutes for real love.  After all, the word love is notoriously ambiguous.  The word is used to describe every sentiment and action ranging from gross, self-centred sensuality, on the one hand, to heroic self-sacrifice, on the other.  Even in the time of Jesus the Greeks had at least three different words for love and the first Christians, when they wanted to describe what they felt was God's love revealed in Jesus, used what had been an obscure word- agape to describe that love.

So how do we describe the best kind of love, a love the world constantly seeks but rarely finds and so often has to make do with second-best?

To answer this question most people, and not only Christians, would have to accept that one of the best examples of love, on earth would be in the life of Jesus Christ.  We Christians would say that Jesus is the only example of true love but then we are prejudiced. So let's pursue our prejudice by examining briefly God's love as seen in Jesus Christ.

First of all, this love is Compassionate.

Every brand of love is compassionate or caring – even self-love cares for itself, if nobody else.  But we assume that love also cares for other people – cares for their well-being.  You don't have to be a committed Christian to be caring.  An accident on the part of a neighbour, or news of a catastrophic earthquake in India, alike arouse feelings of care or compassion in most people.  This is because of our common humanity.

So it is not surprising that Jesus declared His manifesto for mission in the synagogue at Nazareth with the words, that the Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

Later Jesus saw the crowds of people; many bringing their sick to be healed and He had compassion upon them. He saw their needs both material and spiritual and He cared and sought in His ministry that they should be made whole. The healing compassion of Christ has been reflected in the ministry of the Christian Church throughout the ages with monastic works of charity and the endeavours of the churches in the establishment of hospitals, poor schools and myriad works of social welfare. In these areas, as well as in education, the state has followed where the Church has led. So Christian love finds a practical expression in terms of everyday caring for others, and not least for impoverished sections of society.

But second: this love is expressive of Goodness

The love of Jesus isn't simply a case of cold caring, or simply doing the right thing by others.  This love has warmth and is attractive but according to the Apostle Paul, attractive in an everyday, recognisable form.  What do I mean?

The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians in Chapter 13 contains a great hymn in celebration of Christian love.  Henry Drummond, a famous Scottish preacher of a century ago preached a famous sermon on this passage by the great Apostle. He likened the mind of Paul to a prism through which the light shines and is then broken up into the primary colours of the rainbow. Paul is meditating upon the theme of God's love or agape and his inspired mind breaks down that love into its several component parts – love is patient, love is kind, love is humble, love harbours no anger, love is never self-seeking, love is never revengeful, love is protective, love is trusting, hopeful and persevering and so on.

The cardinal point Drummond makes, however, is that ALL these qualities are common to man and in no way mystical or esoteric.  In other words the writer is asserting that Christianity is an ethical religion, which finds its real validity in the way people, treat each other on an ordinary, everyday basis. Piety without goodness is a fraud and therefore of no value.

Drummond is right in his interpretation of love but not entirely conclusive as there is more to agape than a collection of everyday humanitarian virtues. Paul, himself implies as much when he speaks of his own limited understanding of the mind of God, when he writes of himself seeing but a poor reflection of the truth, but hoping one day to see things clearly, as it were, face to face.

There is in fact a mystical, unearthly aspect of the love of God.  This arises from the revealed fact that God's love is also a righteous love – a love that reflects the very character of God Himself.  The Bible speaks of God as a Holy God and we as an unholy and sinful human race.  Our sin lies in the fact that in our human nature there is a desire to put ourselves at the centre of our lives instead of allowing the Spirit of God to rule our lives. Hence, to varying degrees we are a disobedient and rebellious people.  So the greatest aspect of God's love is that in spite of our sinfulness He loves still and seeks to change our lives.

So the third feature of God's love is that it is Self-Sacrificial.

Jesus or the eternal Christ came into our world to die for our sins.  He came primarily not as a miracle-worker, or a great teacher or healer or sage but as our Redeemer. He came not simply to set a good moral example for all, or to demonstrate that love is better than hatred, goodness better than evil.  He did not come simply to pass on the so-called Golden Rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  He came for much, much more than that.  The Good News of the Gospel goes much further than the Golden Rule.  No one can ignore the twin facts of the Cross and Resurrection.   God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes on him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.

This salvation was only possible through self-sacrifice – love had to defeat evil not by force, but by submission not to evil itself, but submission to God's will. God's righteousness had to be satisfied by the offering of a perfect sacrifice – a sacrifice of perfect love, which Christ made upon the Cross on our behalf.  As the Bible puts it, He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree (the Cross), so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed. And this brings us to what is the greatest aspect of God's love.

Fourth: it is a love, which is Limitless

This may not sound exciting, but really it explodes our human thought.  The notion of loving God with much devotion and of loving one's neighbour was not new to the Jews.  Long before the coming of Jesus these precepts had formed the basis of God's law for the Israelites.  Jesus, Himself reminded His fellow Jews, when asked which was the greatest commandment He replied in effect, Love God and your neighbour as yourself.  But the question, which then arose, was,  who is my neighbour?

Jesus didn't answer  the question directly but instead told the Parable of the Good Samaritan. This was the story of the Samaritan – a half-breed Jew who found a fellow human being mugged by the road-side.  He bathed the man's wounds and took him to an inn and paid the inn-keeper to look after him. This Samaritan showed compassion where previously some pious Jews had passed by the wounded man.  The point being that it was a despised Samaritan who was a true neighbour to the Jew in the gutter.

Jesus startled the disciples by saying emphatically that it is one thing to love those who love you, it is another to love either the stranger or your actual enemy.  But we are to love our enemies and those who despitefully use us.

But Jesus, at this point, was only teaching His disciples and us, the true nature of the love of God.  That God's love is for each and for all.  It is in this sense unconditional and limitless.  A lot is said these days about inclusiveness in society.  Nobody must be left out, the handicapped, ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged and so on.  The greatest, the widest act of inclusiveness this world has ever seen was in the death of Christ, who died that ALL might live.

If any are excluded, then it is not God's fault – it is through misunderstanding, ignorance or choice.  John and Charles Wesley sang loudly and unremittingly, ‘ for all, my Saviour died.’

God's love is filled with compassion for all in their need; God's love is fragrant with goodness and all its attendant virtues; God's love is self-sacrificial, bearing the sins and pains of others and above all, God's love is for all.  His love is filled with mercy and forgiveness and was never more needed than in the high-tech and consumer-orientated world of today.

Douglas Graham. February 2001