Only the beloved can love

Love makes the world go around. All we need is love. If love is so important, then perhaps we can build an identity on it? Perhaps we can say that we are defined by who and how we love, that the quality of our love shows the quality of our person? Indeed, the two commands (or double command) that Jesus revealed at the heart of human obedience speak precisely of this: to love God and to love neighbour (Mark 12.28-31). If these are the most important things we are to do, then might they not be the best way of understanding ourselves? We are those who love God and neighbour.

However, the object and quality of our loves does not provide an adequate basis for founding an identity, nor can they be reliably forged into a self-justification. We are only secondarily lovers. We are first beloved. And only when we are first beloved can we then love. This is true of children: being loved comes before any attempt to love in return. And it is even more true of us as children of God: "We love because he first loved us." "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and send his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins." (1 John 4.10, 19)

The good news is that this means that there is no anxiety in love. In loving others, we are not attempting to secure or prove or acquire or protect ourselves. If we sometimes fail in our attempts, we are not destroyed. Instead, the prior love of God for us frees our love from the constrictions that belong to fear. We are beloved; as such, we are brought out into a broad space of freedom and delight. Love is not a burdensome command that must be obeyed lest we fall into destruction. There is no need to beat ourselves up over the imperfections in our attempts to care for those around us. Love is a joyful free responsiveness to God's delight in us.

Of course, loving broken and hurting neighbours will not be all roses and smiles. Tears and suffering are also the fruit of love in a dying world. But our tears are not the price we pay in order to get some love in return. Instead, as beloved of God, we are invited into the sometimes painful privilege of echoing and sharing that divine love.