BitterSweetLife

The love of God cannot be adequately researched online or in an armchair. The fact that you are reading about it now only implies that you won’t understand it if this is the only place you find it.

Gaining the knowledge of God’s love requires power. And not the power of the microprocessor or even of the IQ. The exploration of Christ’s love is a kind of knowing not available to minds in intellectual isolation. Only in a community of faith can you discover “the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth” (Ephesians 3:18) of the love of God.

In other words, tapping this divine affection is a spiritually sinewy business, and not a pursuit that can be entered alone. Navigating Christ’s “lovingkindness” is a team game—because as we investigate it, we also begin to embody it. No one can measure it by herself, because the effects are inner-outer, arcing out and flooding in. Christ pours out his love within his church, and it calls for both digestion and expression.

Love is a lofy peak in the multifaceted character of God. As we long to measure the depths and heights of the heavenly Everest, an earth-defying giant with hidden roots, we understand that to approach the mystery alone will result in disorientation.

We are meant to see the heights reflected in the eyes and voices of our friends. As John said about his master, Jesus, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16). This was the way in which the mystery appeared—in flesh and blood—in and through Jesus. And now in and through Jesus's followers.

Christ’s love is the founding mystery of the world, and it is known only in relationship. It is hard to be saved if you are by yourself. And it is hard to aid someone else if you are alone. We find ourselves driven into community to know the love of God.