In the First Part on the ‘Love of God’ ( Here ) I responded to RC’s “umbrage” with my contention that God loves her just the way she truly is.
In this second part I will give a greater Scriptural basis for this contention by explaining how and why He loves us this way.
RC, now listen to this…
To the Colossians (3:10) St. Paul writes, “(you) have clothed yourselves with the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator…”
What does St. Paul mean here to “ clothe ourselves?” A few points…
First, St. Paul is speaking to our self-knowledge “in Christ”; the truth of how we see and understand ourselves in relation to God.
Too often we judge our standing before God, and our relationship with Him by our feelings and not by His Word.
His Word is the horse that pulls the cart. The cart, our feelings, or our limited human understanding can only follow the leading of Faith. We believe in order to understand and not any other way.
The cart, my feelings, cannot pull the horse, His Word! What we believe shapes our values and actions. Our failure to “walk by faith” explains why one day we can be spiritually “up” and another day “down.”
It is the truth of who I am in a state of Grace before God that guides my feelings for myself and others.
To rely on my feelings, which are up and down, is to be guided by my flesh, the old man.
Of course, we will fall into sin, but at this point in your spiritual life I am sure that these are only ‘venial’ sins.
We ‘put off’ our venial sins by frequent acts of contrition and by faith in His love.
If our sins are frequent or grave, then we will never ‘hold onto’ grace and we must seek the special Grace of Sacramental Confession to ‘patch our hearts.’
Now observe St. Paul’s notion of clothing ourselves from the verse above in Colossians: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (3:12). This exhortation echoes the words of Isaiah: “He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness” (61:10). He writes to the Ephesians: “be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and clothe yourselves with the new man which was created according to the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24).
The awareness of Christ’s indwelling, through the Holy Spirit, empowers us to “put on,” that is “clothe ourselves” with the Divine Virtues of Christ’s glorified human nature. My awareness of Christ as my true self-image, is to know myself as being“compassionate, kind, humble…” I see these virtues in my soul. As well there is the accompanying restraint against any emotion, value, and action contrary to those virtues.
This is the new man of St. Paul who is being renewed according to the image of Christ.
We put on that “New Man,” who is Christ acting through us.
We don’t merely imagine this, rather it is God’s Spirit that is doing this. The Holy Spirit makes this happen in our hearts and minds through Faith, Hope and Love. These become the basis for our new self-image in Christ.
To clothe myself is to believe, to respond to the Holy Spirit within me.
In life, clothing is something I put on, it is not me, the person I am. In this sense, we become participators in the divine nature without ever becoming divine. Christ’s virtues are added to or “put on” me in my created soul. They come from above. I will forever be a creature who shares in the divine nature by Grace. We are forever humble because we know that this is the work, the Grace of the Holy Spirit and does not from ourselves. This is why humility is the foundation of all holiness.
To believe, hope and love, is the work of the Sanctifying Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
These Gifts are infused in us in Baptism and Confirmation.
These Gifts empower us to act supernaturally. As St. Paul will confidently say, “It is not I who live but Christ who lives in me!”
So we believe.
Listen to what St. John writes: “So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 Jn 4:16).
This is one of my favorite verses that I often meditate upon.
I abide in God’s love not because I feel His love. Feelings are most often the cart that the horse of Faith must pull behind it. Whether I have feelings or not does not change my certitude, the Faith that I have in the virtues that I learn to clothe myself in, the source of all my supernatural actions.I abide by believing in in God’s Word knowing and trusting that He would not lie.
The authority that is the base for my Faith is not my own understanding, which is subject to
doubt, but rather the authority of God’s Word.St. Thomas Aquinas makes the astounding declaration that Faith give us greater certitude than that which we believe than in our certitude that 2 + 2 = 4. This is because the truths of our Faith are based upon the authority of God, whereas mathematical truth is recognized as true merely by my own understanding. They represent two different orders: the supernatural and the natural.This brings me to the second point…
We are to be renewed daily in the spirit of our minds
Second point… St. Paul writes that our new self, “is being renewed in knowledge according
to the image of its creator…” (Col 3:10).
The word “knowledge” that St. Paul uses here means divine “knowledge” and not human knowledge (in Greek: ἐπίγνωσις – epignōsis).
It is knowledge attained as the fruit of spiritual communion with God in prayer.
It is the experience of His Divine Love, the awareness of being beloved of Him.
This knowledge, this experience, is revealed to us through the Holy Spirit as we cooperate with
Grace in prayer.
To understand ‘Epignosis’ as St. Paul is using it here, think of virtue.
We can know all about virtue from studying it, but that knowledge does not make us virtuous. Rather ‘ epignosis’ is the knowledge, the awareness, of being virtuous.
It is a certain ‘likeness’ we share with that virtue because we are virtuous.
St. Paul is applying this word to our knowledge of Christ.
That as we grow in epignosis, our ‘new self’ is becoming conformed Him according to His Image.
Or as St. Peter tells us it is our “partaking in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).
The Grace of our communion in prayer with Christ is this certain knowledge of His Presence
in our hearts. I cannot make this happen. It is a gift.
We are aware of being loved by Him only gradually. We are born into life living and trusting our senses. But God is supernatural and He chooses to reveal Himself through Faith. I only become aware of His love with difficulty passing through the darkness of Faith.
I like the verse from the Song of Solomon and apply it to the notion of God’s personal love
for us: “One alone is my dove, my perfect one” (Song 6:9).
It is God loving you as if you were His special chosen one, His perfect one.
He loves each of us uniquely and especially because that is how He chooses to see us. He has the power to do this because He is God and He does it…
St. Augustine so wisely said, “Love and do what you will.”
Third point.
RC, know that I am not advocating ignoring your sins.
Rather I am pointing you in the direction of where you will go and no longer sin.
He who loves does not sin!
This is true freedom.If you believe in God’s personal love for you because of who you truly are, you can believe that it is Christ that He loves in you.
Accept this as a matter of Faith and you will hope in His love. Faith is never fruitless for it always yields Hope: “and Hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).
God cannot resist your hope in His love.
To hope is not to doubt.
Just keep hoping in His love, and acting rightly according to Grace, and you will soon come to recognize His love in the depths of your good heart.
Give Christ the credit for your being truly lovable in the eyes of the Father, despite your personal tendency to sin.
We should look at the extraordinary Graces the Saints received and think that God will give us such Graces too. We trust and believe in the Father’s loving generosity for He is the Giver of every Good Gift and will give us the Grace we ask for.
“without faith, we cannot please God.”
In conclusion, we recognize that we can only receive the gift of who we are in Christ by
faith. St. Paul says that “without faith, we cannot please God” (Heb 11:6).
So what kind of faith is God asking or expecting of you RC?
What he is expecting of you is Faith in the truth that He loves you “just the way you are”.
That is what pleases Him.
And it will make you want to change and be good for His Glory.
This is St. Paul’s great message and secret, which behooves us to understand it and never forget it. If you come to believe that then you cannot but see the essential goodness of yourself and love yourself as God loves you; then you will find the Grace to love Christ and others and it will be Christ loving in you. How else can we fulfill Christ’s command to love others as we love ourselves?