LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
God's Eternal Love for the Church
In God's thought, the Church is vitally and eternally united to His Son, by indescribable cords of love.
Rodrigo Abarca
"God is love", John tells us. This is the essential and prominent feature of His character. All His purposes and thoughts are governed by love. Undoubtedly, we are far from understanding the immensity, depth and intensity of His love.
However, when we consider His eternal purpose and all that is involved in its fulfillment and realization, His divine love shines with an incomparable clarity.
The wonder of grace
The apostle Paul begins his great treaty on the church - which is in the letter to the Ephesians-with a declaration which reaches beyond our understanding or imagination: "Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who blessed us with all spiritual blessing... having chosen us in him (Christ) before the foundation of the world, in love...." These words should deeply surprise us. Before the foundation of the world? That is to say, before we were created? Before the angels emerged, shining out of His hand? Before the minuscule dust appeared by which we were formed? And what's more, before we sinned and turned our back on His purpose and will for us? But God, knowing all that would happen in the future, still loved us in ages hidden in eternity and in the most intimate part of His heart. And from that love everything else arose.
There we were chosen to be His people, predestined to be the Father's children, set apart to be the Son's bride, and blessed us to become the eternal dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. God would share His life with us. God would convert us into the supreme object of His love. From among all that was created, the church was loved above all else. The revelation of this divine mystery shakes the apostle Paul and it constrains him to announce and to clarify to all the dispensation what is the mystery of the church. And the Scriptures have a word to express the action of the divine love through time, from the beginning to the consummation of His purpose: grace. That which love had conceived in the eternity past, grace will manifest and will take forward throughout time until its consummation in the eternal future.
That grace impregnates all the works of God. It is not deserved, it is not bought, it cannot be gained by force. It is the manifestation of His eternal, unconditional and absolute love toward the church. By it, grace will, at the end, be victorious.
Ah, if we could only understand the greatness of His grace, the purpose for which we were created, the greatness of the thoughts of God towards us! But we stumble when we place our gaze exclusively on our littleness, weakness, uselessness and inefficiency. Well, secretly, we have the strange thought that the love of God is something that should somehow be deserved. But this is not true. His love was granted to us before anything we were made or had done anything ourselves. What's more, that same love, foreseeing our fall, prepared the remedy ahead of time. And the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. That was the price that God had to pay by creating us. Against the brilliant dawn of the first man in the garden of Eden, was the desolate shadow of the cross.
A wonderful story of love
The love of God for the church is constant, invariable and definitive. How that thought should comfort us! Because the church is not a human institution, an "ecclesiastical" organization or a religious movement. What God loved from eternity is something entirely different. The Father has loved his Son eternally, the Son of His love, and in Him He also loved the church, because in God's thought, she is vitally and eternally united to His Son. First as a project hidden in his bosom, just like Eve in Adam's side. Then, when the Word was made flesh, as the mystery which descended with him to the heart of this lost world. Thus, he came to look for His eternal Love. And finally, as the liberated church and lifted in union with Him above all powers of sin, death and Satan, returned to her original position, vocation and glory.
His is a story of love toward His eternally lost and eternally opposing lover. Redeemed by the highest price ever known or to be known in God's creation. The Son of God's divine blood. Because it was God, in Jesus, who suffered on the cross. That which made the countless galaxies and the radiant fire cherubim, and is sat down above all that He created, at a distance impossible to measure or to estimate; He descended to take on Himself the flesh and blood of His love. And being in that condition, He suffered the cross and poured out His blood. He knew pain and took on Himself His love's torture and condemnation. It was an act of pure love; of supreme love. There was no more necessity than that which His love imposed on him. And when doing this, God in Christ united the destiny of His beloved church forever. The angels contemplated and were shaken at the demonstration of His love offering, poured out to the last on the horrendous cross. Because there, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. He descended to the deepest abysses of death and the eternal perdition, and from there brought His beloved back to life and eternity.
And not only that, because when lifting her from her chains and saving her from her misleading, He inserted her once again into the original line of His eternal purpose. Because she will become, by work of His grace, a glorious church, holy and without blemish; completely apart from sin and death.
Because His love continues. He doesn't stop at salvation. He advances to form them, to edify them, to sustain them and to take them forward until reaching all that was prepared for them in the eternity past. On this point, our mind needs to be transformed in a radical way. Our eyes need to be opened to know the greatness, the vastness and the extent of our calling. And by it, it is required that, in all things, that we know His love. That love which never abandoned us in them past will never abandon us in the future, unless we voluntarily reject it.
Our heart needs to open up to the fullness of His love and to fall into His arms and surrender its agitation, anxiety and fear. The Creator, the Author of the Life, the eternal God by whose word the universe is governed, the ultimate and definitive Reality, loves us. And He loves us in a way that overcomes and amazes our heart. Why? Because He has wanted it to be so. Beyond all the fear, the darkness and the shadow of death, is the radiant reality of Him whose love for us surpasses all understanding. Here lies our consolation and eternal security.
We don't want to enter into theological arguments, but what greater security can there be for us than His love? He who loved us from eternity, died on the cross and poured out His blood for us; will He allow, after all that, that we be lost? Not if we trust Him; not if we put all our security in His love.
The mirror of His Love will last forever
To conclude this brief reflection, in which we have tried at least to approach a little of the mystery of the eternal love of God for the church, we must refer to its consummation in the eternity to come. She was conceived in a dream of love in the eternal ages, known only by God. Then she appeared in the world, out of the dust of the earth. However, for an instant, everything seemed to be lost forever when Adam and Eve chose the way of rebellion and alliance with the powers hostile to those of God.
But the Son of God entered into the world full of grace and truth, to rescue what had been lost. Not only lost men and women, but that which expresses the deepest mystery in the will of God: the church which is His body, His temple and His bride.
What will come in the future? The Bible speaks to us of a city that is the full expression of all that God conceived before the foundation of the world. Each stone of that city is inscribed with the mark of His love. That city is the complete fruit of His love. In it, what love began in the night of the times, is fully consummated in the eternal noon of the ages to come. It is the supreme tribute to His constant, suffering, indefatigable, wounded and rejected love, which is finally, received, accepted, reciprocated and loved. In this city, the whole universe will finally contemplate God in the whole glory of His grace, kindness and mercy. Because she will forever be the mirror of His love.