He Loved Us First
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Truly you alone are the Lord. Your dominion is our
salvation, for to serve you is nothing else but to be saved by you! O
Lord, salvation is your gift and your blessing is upon your people; what else
is your salvation but receiving from you the gift of loving you or being
loved by you? That, Lord, is why you willed that the Son at your right
hand, the One whom you made strong for yourself, should be called Jesus, that
is to say, Savior, for he will save his people from their sins, and there is
no other in whom there is salvation. He taught us to love him by first
loving us, even to death on the cross. By loving us and holding us so
dear, he stirred us to love him who had first loved us to the end. And this is clearly the reason: you first loved us so that we
might love you--not because you needed our love, but because we could not be
what you created us to be, except by loving you. In many ways and on various occasions you spoke to our fathers
through the prophets. Now in these last days you have spoken to us in
the Son, your Word; by him the heavens were established and all their powers
came to be by the breath of his mouth. For you to speak thus in your Son was to bring out in the light
of day how much and in what way you loved us, for you did not spare your own
Son but delivered him up for us all. He also loved us and gave himself
up for us. This, Lord, is your Word to us, this is your all-powerful
message: while all things were in midnight silence (that is, were in the
depths of error), he came from his royal throne, the stern conqueror of error
and the gentle apostle of love. Everything he did and everything he said on earth, even enduring
the insults, the spitting, the buffeting--the cross and the grave--all of
this was actually you speaking to us in your Son, appealing to us by your
love and stirring up our love for you. You know that this disposition could not be forced on our
hearts, my God, since you created us; it must rather be elicited. And
this, for the further reason that there is no freedom where there is
compulsion, and where freedom is lacking, so too is righteousness. You wanted us to love you, then, we who could not with justice
have been saved had we not loved you, nor could we have loved you except by
your gift. So, Lord, as the apostle of your love tells us, and as we
have already said, you first loved us: you are first to love all those who
love you. Thus we hold you dear by the affection you have implanted in
us. You are the one supremely good and ultimate goodness. Your
love is your goodness, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the
Son! From the beginning of creation it was he who hovered over the
waters--that is, over the wavering minds of us all, offering himself to all,
drawing all things to himself. By his inspiration and holy breath, by
keeping us from harm and providing for our needs, he unites God to us and us
to God. From a discourse On the Contemplation of God |