Love is entirely other-focused, as we have said before. Perfect love casts out fear. Because fear is self-focused, based on the anticipation of harm to one's own integrity, or that of a loved one. But perfect love casts out fear, because it erases that concern for one's self or one's own.
Jesus said:
"Greater love has no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends." -John 15:13
He was about to do just that.
God is love. In fact, I believe that God, in His relationships within the Godhead, and in his relationship to His creation, embodies the ultimate, perfect love. God has no fear, even though man's free will poses a distinct threat to His goodness and the perfection of all that He loves. God has no fear of Satan's destructive power in the world, for He is entirely capable of absorbing all evil into Himself through His death on the cross. God is not afraid to suffer, to be stained, humiliated, and to die.
But if we make Jesus not God, we lose that. Instead, we have a God who did not suffer for us Himself, who did not purchase the Church with His own blood, but rather the blood of another. God allowed His own Son to suffer death. But God Himself did not lay down His own life for His friends.
Even a man can do that. Many have. Jesus did. His act was the ultimate act of love.
Arianism, therefore, leaves the door open for a man to love more than God.
And in so doing, Jesus, who gave His own life for the whole world, is superior in love to God--if He is indeed not God in identity.
Food for thought.
Another verse that illustrates this is Romans 5:6-8:
ReplyDelete"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
God demonstrates His own love.... Yet the emphasis is on Christ's act of self-sacrifice, not on the Father's sacrifice of the Son.
God so loved the world that He gave His Son.
Yet the ultimate expression of divine love is that Christ died, giving Himself. He is not only the agent of the Covenant... He is the ultimate Divine expression, the expression of Love, which God is.
The Word who was with God, and who is God.
And here's yet another:
ReplyDelete“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.... The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
-John 10:10, 17-18