God is Merciful

 

Such a simple truth.  A truism even.  But today as we approach the Nativity, it weighs particularly heavy on me how great a truth it is.

I think two passages of Scripture put things in their proper place:

"We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

"In this manner, therefore, pray:  Our Father in heaven . . ." Matthew 6:9

God is our Father.  We -- men and women -- are sons of the Father.  What this means is our faith -- which is properly understood not as mere belief, but as trust -- flows not from our obedience, or our fear, or our desire to avoid punishment, but from our love of God.  And that love is only rightly expressed as a return of His love to us.  Anything less and it is not true love.  We love God in the same way a child loves his father.  Not because he fears his father's wrath or punishment, but precisely because when that child was at his lowest, his weakest, his most helpless, his father took him in his loving arms and cared for him.  A father sacrifices his own comfort and happiness to see his children thrive.

This Nativity season, we remember when God sent His only begotten Son to us.  Not so we might avoid punishment, but so that we might live.  This is how we rightly understand our obligations as Christians.  It is why we love our neighbor, it is why we are obedient to bishops and priests and parents and earthly authorities.  It is why we avoid sin, go to confession, attend the services of the Church, and pray often. Not because God needs us to do it in order to save us, but because it is good for us, and God loves us and wants us to be healthy and whole.

Too often, Christians find themselves mired in a moralistic, legalistic pseudo-Christian faith where God is the judge and we are the accused, and therefore the basis of our obedience, faith and law keeping is to avoid punishment.  But the Scriptures do not speak this way.  God does not accuse us.  Satan does.  "Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, 'Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.'"  Revelation 12:10.  And while certainly there is a Patristic thread that indicates we ought to self-accuse in order to see our own sin, for example, St. John Chrysostom's Three Homilies on the Devil, we also see in that same Patristic thread the notion that accusing others is of the devil:

For that ye partake of the divine oracles insatiably, that day particularly showed: whereon I discoursed about the unlawfulness of speaking ill one of another, when I furnished you with a sure subject for self accusation, suggesting that you should speak ill of your own sins, but should not busy yourselves about those of other people: when I brought forward the Saints as accusing themselves indeed, but sparing others: Paul saying I am the chief of sinners, and that God had compassion on him who was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious, and calling himself one born out of due time, and not even thinking himself worthy of the title of Apostle: Peter saying Depart from me because I am a sinful man: Matthew styling himself a publican even in the days of his Apostleship: David crying out and saying My iniquities have gone over my head, and as a heavy burden have been burdensome to me: and Isaiah lamenting and bewailing I am unclean, and have unclean lips: The three children in the furnace of fire, confessing and saying that they have sinned and transgressed, and have not kept the commandments of God. Daniel again makes the same lamentation. When after the enumeration of these Saints, I called their accusers flies, and introduced the right reason for the comparison, saying, that just as they fasten themselves upon the wounds of others, so also the accusers bite at other people's sins, collecting disease therefrom for their acquaintance, and those who do the opposite, I designated bees, not gathering together diseases, but building honeycombs with the greatest devotion, and so flying to the meadow of the virtue of the Saint: Then accordingly—then ye showed your insatiable longing.

When I first visited an Orthodox Church, the thing that struck me most was the line from the dismissal that is the title of this blog.  The entire dismissal is:

May he who rose again from the dead, Christ our true God, through the intercessions of His all-immaculate and all-blameless holy Mother; by the might of the precious and life-giving cross; by the protection of the honorable bodiless powers of heaven; at the supplication of the honorable, glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John; of the holy, glorious and all-laudable apostles; of our father among the saints, John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople; of the holy, glorious and right-victorious martyrs; of our venerable and God-bearing fathers; of (saint to whom the temple is dedicated); of the holy and righteous ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna; of the (saint(s) of the day) and of all the saints: have mercy on us, and save us, forasmuch as He is good and loveth mankind.

As we approach the Divine Nativity of Our Lord, let us remember that the Father sent His only begotten Son, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, not to accuse us, but to unite us to Himself. And as we continue the fast, increase our prayer and devotion, and celebrate the coming Feast, let us recall that great love, that our longing, too, might increase.  God is merciful.  We love because He first loved us.