This is the text from the free study guide for our free booklet, Love and Salvation.
“All you need is love,” The Beatles sang, and the claim is even more accurate than they realized. Looking back to Martin Luther’s point about the Law in the previous booklet, love is both law and gospel: we are commanded to love God and others (Jn 15:12–14, 17), but the selfishness, conflict and hurt in our lives show our failure to live in love; love is also the gospel (Jn 3:16), however, because God is love and enables us to live in love (1 Jn 4:7–12). This love further extends to all creation, promising flourishing for all things (Is 65:17–19, 25).
Gregory of Nyssa—clearly stating the Orthodox Christian understanding of Christ’s saving work—says the death and resurrection of the Son of God defeats the power of death. Death itself still occurs, of course, but it does not have the power to destroy our existence or separate us from God, and by extension its toxic effect on lives—weakening us and thereby inciting us to fight against our seeming annihilation through a myriad of self-exalting sins—is likewise broken.
How does God do this? Through love. And how is God able to do this? Because God is love. What’s more, Augustine tells us, is that “love is God.” God is love, and through his loving relationship with us (and the rest of the world) we are able to love, meaning every instance and experience of love is the presence and work of the loving God. John Chrysostom emphasizes this by describing divine and human love as “intertwined;” the commandments to love God and others are so closely related as to seem one, because we fully love others when we whole-heartedly love God (and, conversely, we cannot fully love God unless we truly love others).
It is no wonder Clement of Rome proclaims, “You see, beloved, how great and wonderful a thing is love, and that there is no declaring its perfection.” We are incapable of truly describing the heights to which love can lift us or the beauty it brings into the world. Our relationship with God is rooted in his love, our lives are being perfected by this love, and harmony is achieved through love. Love is the meaning, as Julian of Norwich says: love itself shows us love, and does so as an act of love. Everything God does is loving, and will be forever.
And this story isn’t limited to humanity. Remember that the entire world suffers due to our selfishness and our violence (Rm 8:19–23); “It was evil intreated for your sake,” Chrysostom said in the previous booklet, “and became corruptible.” Through love, however, Third Isaiah tells us a better world is available for all (although the writer still dislikes snakes, echoing Gn 3:14!). This renewal of the world through God’s love should be a source of joy, John Calvin says, because we carry this pledge from God in our hearts. The greatest response we can therefore have is to joyfully praise God throughout our lives.
