Unhypocritical Love

Unhypocritical Love - Hating the evil, clinging to the good.

To loving one another as family - devoted
For each other's honour - leading the way
In eagerness - not lazy
From the Spirit - bubbling over
To the Lord - serving as a slave
In hope - rejoicing
Through suffering - holding on
In prayer - pushing forwards
For the needs of the saints - sharing
To love strangers - seeking.

That's my attempt at a translation of Romans 12:9-13. Most English translations make it a string of imperatives, but there aren't any in the Greek. Of course the Greek doesn't use a different preposition every time...

All Loves Excelling - John Bunyan

I've just finished reading this book on Ephesians 3:18-19. It was originally published as "The Saints' Knowledge of Christ's Love", but the folks at Banner have reprinted it under a snappier, more Wesleyan title. There are some really heart-warming bits, as well as some quite dry bits. Bunyan is so good at psychological application! Here are some highlights:

O the length of the saving arm of God! As yet thou art within reach thereof; do not thou go about to measure arms with God, as some good men are apt to do: I mean, do not thou conclude that because thou canst not reach God by thy short stump, therefore he cannot reach thee with thy long arm... It becomes thee, when thou canst not perceive that God is within reach of thy arm, then to believe that thou art within the reach of his; for it is long, and none knows how long.
p.14

Were all the saints on earth, and all the saints in heaven to contribute all that they know of this love of Christ, and to put it into one sum of knowledge, they would greatly come short of knowing the utmost of this love...
p.68

know they self, what a vile, horrible, abominable sinner thou art. For thou canst not know the love of Christ before thou knowest the badness of thy nature... He that sees most of what an abonimable wretch he is, he is like to see most of what is the love of Christ... So then, if a man would be sure and steadfast, let him labour before all things to see his own wretchedness.
p.84

Why then do not Christians devote themsevles to the meditation of this so heavenly, so goodly, so sweet, and so comfortable a thing, which yieldeth such advantage to the soul? The reason is, these things are talked of, but not believed: did men believe what they say, when they speak so largely of the love of God, and the love of Jesus Christ, they would, they could not but meditate upon it.
p.113

"God is love" as primary?

There seems to be a common assumption in an awful lot of modern theology that the primary truth about God is that he is love. "God is love" is at least Biblical as a statement (1 John 4:8, 16), and there's a lot of important stuff that can be said about the Trinity from that statement.

But of course, people often load the word "love" with a lot of baggage it wasn't meant to carry, and interpret "God is love" in a way that contradicts large chunks of the rest of the Bible.

But why should "God is love" be primary at all? Why not "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5). After all, it's in the same book. But I don't think either "God is love" or "God is light" is the number one candidate for a three word description beginning "God is...". Nor is "Truth", "Life" or "Wisdom", though there may be something to be said for each of those.

I think there are two possibilities much stronger than either. After all, we're never told that "God is love, love, love", but we are told that he is "holy, holy, holy." Actually, we're told that as many times as we are told that God is love (Isaiah 6:3, Rev 4:8), and we're told that God is holy quite a lot more (Lev 11:44, Lev 11:45; Josh 24:19; 1 Sam 6:20; Ps 22:3; 99:9; Isaiah 5:16; 1 Pe 1:16 for starters). So I'd say "God is holy" is much closer to being his primary attribute that "God is love" on the basis of the Biblical evidence.

The other possibility of course is "God is Jesus".

Now imagine what modern theology would be like if we started with the truth that God is holy rather than the truth that he is love.