Gift of God’s Love

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By peace | October 15, 2007

When God revealed himself to man over the centuries, he did not do so merely to give us information about himself. He did it in order to set up a real living relationship between himself and us. It was his way of inviting us to be his friends. The way in which we respond to that invitation is reflected in the way we behave. In other words, our behaviour is our response to God’s loving invitation.

From the very beginning God invited man to a life of intimacy with him. In spite of man’s initial failure to respond to that invitation(ie by orginal sin), God continued to pursue the relationship and to repeat the invitation down through the history of the people of Israel. Finally, he made that invitation still more explicit by sending his own Son, Jesus Christ, to us.

The agreements or covenants, which God made with this Chosen People at various times, eg with Noah, with Abraham, and with Moses, were successive stages of the establishing of that relationship. They all involved God’s giving of himself to man, and man’s loving response in the gift of himself and his behaviour to God. Their recurring theme in God’s words was,”I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

But how exactly does God want us to respond to the invitation to love him? Until Jesus himself came into the world, the Ten Commandments as given to Moses were the most specific expression of the response demanded of mankind by God. They were the gift of God’s love to man; the guidance that weak man needed; bonds of love uniting the Creator to his people.