Christmas Love

God is Love. Beautiful. Profound. Mystery. At Christmas, we (rightly) think so often of the love of the Father demonstrated to us in sending his Son at Christmas. We think (rightly) of the Son’s love in coming as a child, the love that compelled him to take on humility. (And the Spirit is once again oft neglected.) But, God is Love. He is not only love toward us; he in his three-persons is love. The Father loved Christ from the beginning; that was his eternal activity. Christ speaks again and again of the Father’s love for him and his love for the Father. So, would the Triune Love not be demonstrated in this pivotal event of the Son's incarnated birth as well? How do we see the Trinity’s interchange of love at Christmas time, in the incarnation? The mystery, the wonder, may we be caught up in this mystery! Eternal, heavenly, divine, perfect love.

The Triune God is Love in himself. If one Person only, he could not love. But being Three, he is Love in himself. So, in the act of giving at Christmastime of his Son; the act of giving himself; the Spirit’s proclamation to Zacharias, Elizabeth, Joseph, the shepherds, the magi, Simeon, and Anna that God’s promises were given God expresses his nature, his interacting-intertwining-dance of love in his being. His self pours out in love, expressing who he is.

From the Son, Christmas was an act of love for the Father in that it was an act of obedience for his Father’s glory. He left his glory for his Father’s glory, showing that he loved his Father by obeying his plans, to reconcile man to God. Christ elevated his Father as supremely valuable, the object most worthy of love and trust. Can you just hear the Son whisper, “Yes, Father! Yes. I love you and I want others to love you. I love you, and I want to show others how worthy you are to be trusted and obeyed.” What mystery! Can we imagine divine love? 

“…but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father” (John 14:31).

“…just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10).

 

From the Father, Christmas was an act of love for the Son in that the climax of the incarnation would be Christ’s exaltation and that all things would be summed up in him and all things put under his feet (Eph. 1:22-23; 1 Cor. 15:27). “This, my Son, will be for you. Just like Joshua, all that your feet touches will be yours. The kingdoms of this world will be yours. I love you, my Son, and this will be my gift to you.”

“The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35).

 

“You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet” (Ps. 8:6).

“And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22-23).

“And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end’” (Luke 1:29-33).

From the Spirit, Christmas was an act of love in that he pointed to the faithfulness of the Father and the glory of the Promised Son. Zechariah was full of the Spirit and prophesied (Luke 1:67). Elizabeth was full of the Spirit and blessed Mary and her son John was full of the Spirit and leapt in the womb (Luke 1:41, 44). The Spirit descended on Mary in the virgin birth (Luke 1:35). The Spirit graciously told Simeon he would see the promises of God fulfilled and then prompted Simeon to go to the Temple (Luke 2:27). “Look!” the Spirit in love whispered, nudged, proclaimed. “Father and Son, I love you! I will go and proclaim. Show your worthiness, faithfulness, steadfast love, grace, peace, salvation, and favor. I will make you known! It is my joy and privilege to go forth and stir hearts to you, so that you are worshipped!”

And we respond—we love because he first loved us. Dwell on the Triune God’s love for himself, the dance within, it’s expression. Meditate. Savor. Delight. This is to glorify him.

POSTSCRIPT

I am torn between ending the post there and adding the forthcoming. It is so easy to just move on to what it means to us. This is important; responding, trusting, obeying, spelling out the implications for daily life is part of glorifying God. Yet, sometimes we just need to contemplate God, his essence, himself. Glory. Glory.

With that said….

From the Father, Son, and the Spirit, Christmas was an act of love for us. It is easy to see it in the gift of salvation and the forgiveness of sins. But we are also gifted with a personal relationship with Love himself. We are gifted with an invitation to this dance. We are gifted with the life of this dynamic, loving, giving, life-pouring God. To be in union with him is life itself—Triune God is life himself, life itself (Jn. 17:3). We are gifted with this perfect Love. As Jesus says, “You have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn. 17:23).

This celebration and dance of love is revealed at Christmas, but it touches every day. We never walk alone, in sleepless nights, or as we anxiously await a doctor’s report, or as we age and the world seems to shrink in loneliness, or when our husband walks out on us. For we have the gift of a relationship with Love himself. We never have true reason to doubt Love (although the circumstances and Satan lie!) because we see, tangibly, incarnationally, Love at work and Love in history. We have life, even when autoimmune disorders, age, disease, cancer eat away at our bodies. We are gifted with perfect love, invited into this dance, even as we fail and doubt and cling to the world and idols. We are gifted with perfect love as we cook, as we face another day with joy or anxiety, as we drive to work, as we sit down for a cup of tea, as we mindlessly flip through a magazine in the doctor’s waiting room. He is with us.

The Father…Son…and Holy Spirit glorify each other…At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt, commune with, and defer to one another… When early Greek Christians spoke of perichoresis in God they meant that each divine person harbors the others at the center of his being. In constant movement of overture and acceptance each person envelops and encircles the others. (Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Eerdmans, 2002.)

And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christian and all other religions: In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing – not even just one person – but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance… . [The] pattern of this three-personal life is … the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. (C.S. Lewis, “The Good Infection,” in Mere Christianity)