Staying in Love with Christ

Fr Luke A Veronis

Saint John the Divine received a special Revelation from God at end of 1^st century. It begins by giving a warning to the seven churches in Asia Minor, churches that represented the 2^nd or 3^rd generation of Christians in the early Church. These Christians surely started off their faith journey with such fervor and love for Christ yet Saint John warns them about falling away.

One of the harshest warnings that Saint John gives to the Church in Ephesus is that they have left their first love. Their love for God and for their neighbor has grown cold. He adds to one of the other churches, “your faith has become lukewarm.”

What a common temptation in the Christian life for every generation – that our love for God grows cold and our faith becomes lukewarm. Love is the central and most important characteristic of our faith. We heard in today’s Gospel reading a lawyer asking Jesus what is the greatest commandment in the Law of Moses, and our Lord saying unequivocally the two greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Our entire faith rests on these two commandments. 

God created the world out of His love. Imagine, before all time and creation, there existed only the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit representing a Trinity of Love. Out of this divine love God created the world. He created man and woman in His image of love and created us to love, and to be loved! This explains our sole purpose and goal in life – to love and to be loved! 

When Adam and Eve turned away from God, they rejected His love. They tried to live life outside His love. Yet, God did not stop loving the world. In fact, He acted again - For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him will have everlasting life. God did not send His son to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through Him.

God came Himself to show the world what true and authentic love is – a sacrificial and unconditional love on the Cross! Always remember the goal of our life is to receive God’s love, and then to love God back with “all our soul, all our mind, all our strength, and all our heart.” Yet, to love God implies loving the ones created in God’s image – loving our neighbor.

St. John says that if we have fellowship with God, we will have communion with all who surround us, our neighbors, our friends, and even our enemies. He even bluntly states, “If someone says that ‘I love God’ but hates his brother or sister, that person is a liar, for if we don’t love a person who we see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen.”

Our Christian faith is not simply an intellectual faith but a faith of loving action. This is why “Those who truly love God should live like he lived.” We should love as He loved. Here is our call –to reflect to the world the divine love of God. Yet, here also lies our greatest danger – when we forget our first love and become lukewarm.

How does this happen? How do we lose our love for God and our love for our neighbor? Let me give you the danger signs.

1. We Lose our love for God when we hate another person. St. John bluntly says that anyone who says they love Christ but hates someone else is a liar. They are deceiving themselves. They cannot be true followers of Jesus. Think about this. Do we have any ill-feelings for anyone in our life today? If so, we risk losing our love for God. St. John says, “Stop saying WITH WORDS that we love God, but show it with our actions. How can we say we love God who we don’t see, if we don’t love the people around us who we do see?”

2. We lose our love for God when we don’t forgive one another. Some may ask, “Why should we love these other people. They don’t deserve it. They have offended me; they have hurt me; they have done some evil against me.” But St. John responds to this concern, “WE LOVE OTHERS BECAUSE GOD FIRST LOVED US.” We don’t love others because they deserve it. We love them because God first has filled our hearts with His divine and unconditional love!

3. We Lose Our love for God when we ignore the other and become indifferent to them. When we ignore or don’t even notice the other, we become blind and indifferent towards God! This is a sure way of losing our love for God!

4. We Lose our love for God when we disobey his commandments and place our own desires before His. St. John says that those who love God will obey his commandments. We Christians must be strive for holiness and perfection in our lives. Don’t say, “Oh, I can’t live that life because it will interfere with my life and desires.” Our life is to become one with Christ’s life.

5. We lose our love for God when we create a worldview different from God’s, when our goals and direction of life departs from God’s purpose for us. St. John warns us to be careful about loving the world and the things of the world – money, pride, pleasure, power, fame. These passing, earthly interests will not nourish our love for God. We must seek first the Kingdom of God and the virtues that reflect this kingdom – love, mercy, grace, goodness, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

6. We lose our love for God when we do not act as generous stewards of God’s gifts. Everything we have is a gift from God! Whenever we have the means to live comfortably and sees another person in need and doesn’t help them, how can God’s love be in us. We have been given all we have so that we can share His love with others.

7. We lose our love for God when we allow fear to enter our lives.  “God is love and perfect love casts out all fear. Whenever we allow fear to enter our lives, we push out the love of God. Fear is a sign of our lack of faith, of our relationship with God lacking divine love. Unconditional love is a sign of God’s presence within us and casts out all fear.

Divine love is not easy to obtain. The truth is, it is difficult to love those who hate us, to forgive those who hurt us, or to have mercy on those who offend us. Yet, as we grow in our love for God, and are filled with His Divine Love, we will realize we can’t contain it. It is from the ocean of God's love that the tiny drops of our own ability to love come from. We receive the ability to love only through the grace that comes from Christ’s love!

God says to each one of us, “I have created you out of my Divine Love so that you can love one another. This is our purpose and goal of life – to receive God’s love and to share this love with others. This explains the two greatest commandments of our faith.