God’s redeeming love

King Charles III delivered his annual Christmas Day Broadcast to the nation, following a tradition that dates back to a radio speech by George V in 1932. The monarch typically talks about current issues, and on occasions talks about more personal matters. Many people still stop what they are doing and listen with interest. This year the King used his address, among other things, to thank medical staff who provided “strength, care and comfort” to him and his daughter-in-law Princess Kate during their treatment for cancer. He also spoke of the continuing example of the life and ministry of Jesus:

“The example that Jesus gave us is timeless and universal. It is to enter the world of those who suffer, to make a difference to their lives and so bring hope where there is despair….

“As the famous Christmas Carol, ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ reminds us, ‘our Saviour holy’ ‘came down to Earth from Heaven,’ lived among ‘the poor and mean and lowly’ and transformed the lives of those he met, through God’s ‘redeeming love’.”

King Charles identified “redeeming love” as “the heart of the Nativity story”, an interpretation with which Christians would agree. He then added, “We can hear its beat in the belief of all the great faiths in the love and mercy of God in times of joy and of suffering, calling us to bring light where there is darkness.” But is God’s redeeming love at the heart of all religions? It is an attractive idea and one that some would suggest chimes with the requirements of a pluralist society: we would get along better as a society if we all acknowledged that the different religions have a common belief in the doctrine of a loving God!

The famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked, when considering the question if there is a common element to all games, e.g. board games, card-games and ball games that one must “look and see”:

“Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’ – but look and see whether there is anything common to them all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!” (Philosophical Investigations, Paragraph 66)

Let us “look and see” at the teachings of some religions about the love of God. The emphasis of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) is two-fold – God’s “steadfast love”, particularly for his chosen people, Israel, and the need for their love in return: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy  6.5); the context makes clear that human love for God is shown by keeping his commandments. Later Rabbinic Judaism complemented the commandments with addition rules, the intention of which was to ensure faithful obedience and to guard against unintended disobedience. The theme of righteousness, coupled with mercy, best expresses the nature of contemporary Orthodox Judaism.

Islam is regarded by its followers as the fulfilment of Judaism and Christianity. That God is loving (Al-Wadud) is one of 99 attributes (“Beautiful Names”) of Allah that are derived from both the Qur’an and the Hadith (sayings and traditions of the prophet Muhammad). The love of God is not a prominent theme in either. Moreover, Allah does not love everyone, as numerous verses in the Qur’an make clear. He does not love “the ungrateful and wicked” (Sura 2.276), “those who reject faith”, “those who do wrong” (Sura 3.32 and 57), and those “given to crime” (Sura 4.107); these examples do not exhaust the groups that are excluded from Allah’s love and mercy. The Qur’an teaches that Allah loves those who love him and show their love through obedience to his laws.

The concept of a God of love is problematic in Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. This is because neither has the concept of a God who alone created and sustains the universe. Even the schools of Hinduism that accommodate devotion (bhakti) to one or other of the numerous deities expect the initiative to be taken by those seeking ‘salvation’ (moksha). As in Islam, the concept of grace has a place in Hinduism and in Mahayana Buddhism (but not Theravada Buddhism), yet its meaning is different from that of Christianity, where God takes the initiative to secure our liberation and salvation by becoming incarnate in Christ and dying on our behalf to redeem us from slavery to sin.  A wider survey of religions would confirm the conclusion that religions other than Christianity lack the same focus on the love of God, or interpret it differently.

The love of God is taught, in the Christian Scriptures, and shown, in the history of Israel, and uniquely through the ministry, sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus. “God is love” (I John 4.16) is the defining characteristic of the Christian God. It gives to Christianity its distinctive nature and identity. Some theologians believe that it finds eternal expression in the mutual love between the different members of the Trinity. The love of God is an active love that seeks communion with us and, in turn, inspires us to seek the well-being of our neighbour. The New Testament has a special word to describe Christian love – agape. Early Christian writers took up the term, which was, until their adoption of it, a largely secular, Greek term for different forms of love, and gave it a much deeper and almost exclusively religious/theological meaning. Under the influence of the gospel writers, and the Apostles Paul and John particularly, agape came to describe the sacrificial love of God for us, our love for God, and our love for our neighbour. Under Christian influence the word was transformed in meaning to encompass the whole of Christian existence. Christians can be confident that the message of God’s redeeming love, revealed in Christ, remains relevant to everyone.

Please note that the statements and views expressed in this article of those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Contemporary Christianity.