The Bible teaches us that God is Love.
We know that God is kind, that God is just, that God is faithful, that God is the Creator of all things, but above all things God is Love.
We can spend a life time contemplating the many ways that God is Love. Indeed Mother Julian of Norwich and many others have done so. Like Luther, we may ask how is it best to act in Love, through contemplation like Mary, or through active service like Martha?
We can spend many a happy hour in prayerful thought upon the greatness and the wideness and the depths and the heights of God's Love. By doing so the greatest of the saints learn thankfulness and how the least of the saints, poor sinners such as me, are less wicked than they would have been if we had not been claimed by God as His own.
To live without God is to live without Love, to walk a lonely mile in a barren land, buffeted by the winds of fury and self-righteousness.
But to walk along with God's Love holding us up when we stumble, picking us up when we fall, dusting us down when we bruise our knees, is to live in faith, not fear.
Oh, the poor wretched heathen! He walks along burdened by his obligations, his condemnation, his own self -loathing.
But we look at Jesus Christ and we see His life of perfect Love!
We see how God's Love for mankind is unconditional, as true love truly is.
Yet, throughout the world, there are many who claim to know God, but who are in fact idolaters. They simply follow some man made regulations. They dress these regulations in a robe and burn some incense and they call themselves holy. The false prophets come not merely to judge, but to condemn. They believe they can work themselves into God's favour by laying burdens upon the people. They stand proudly over the bodies of the people they have crushed.
But God is Love, and Jesus Christ came to set the people free.
If anyone tells you otherwise they are a liar.
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