Excuse me for thinking out loud with you, Geoff. I think that you have something here but in processing what I read, I’m wondering if familial love can have just as much negativity as sacrificial love? Having seen some of the dark side of family love with coercion and manipulation at play, I think some of us would have some difficulty in embracing it as you do here. I think the imagery you used of the love of the Father, Son, and Spirit are gripping and inviting, but not all of has had that kind of familial affection and so our imagination is starved and we might not be able to accept it as real.
When Paul spoke to the Greeks in Athens he did not mention God's sacrificial love. Neither did Peter mention it in the first sermon at Pentecost.
Love has many aspects: love of country . . . love of truth . . . love of God, of family, romantic love, and of course secular ideas of love as constantly repeated in infinite numbers of pop songs.
The message of Jesus Christ is not only "God's sacrificial love," or "God loves you." It includes: the existence of God . . . the truthfulness and reliability of the word of God (without which we have no religion at all). . . the sinfulness of human nature . . . the reality of Christ's divine nature. . . and other topics.
Without all of those things God's sacrificial love has little or no significance.
"God is love" - but God's, justice, truth anger and judgments are also part of the divine metaphysic within which God's love must be understood.
Excuse me for thinking out loud with you, Geoff. I think that you have something here but in processing what I read, I’m wondering if familial love can have just as much negativity as sacrificial love? Having seen some of the dark side of family love with coercion and manipulation at play, I think some of us would have some difficulty in embracing it as you do here. I think the imagery you used of the love of the Father, Son, and Spirit are gripping and inviting, but not all of has had that kind of familial affection and so our imagination is starved and we might not be able to accept it as real.
When Paul spoke to the Greeks in Athens he did not mention God's sacrificial love. Neither did Peter mention it in the first sermon at Pentecost.
Love has many aspects: love of country . . . love of truth . . . love of God, of family, romantic love, and of course secular ideas of love as constantly repeated in infinite numbers of pop songs.
The message of Jesus Christ is not only "God's sacrificial love," or "God loves you." It includes: the existence of God . . . the truthfulness and reliability of the word of God (without which we have no religion at all). . . the sinfulness of human nature . . . the reality of Christ's divine nature. . . and other topics.
Without all of those things God's sacrificial love has little or no significance.
"God is love" - but God's, justice, truth anger and judgments are also part of the divine metaphysic within which God's love must be understood.