Equal in the Eyes of God

The love Christ commands us to share is different from any other love. Its origin comes not from us but from God and therefore, we are commanded to love as Christ loved with the unconditional love of God. This means in no uncertain terms that our love is to extend beyond those whom we would choose to love to all those with whom we have the equality of being a human being. In other words, we are to love everyone, simply because we are all equal in the eyes of God.

When we love only those who are similar to us – those who make loving them easy – we fail to love unconditionally. Rather we are sharing preferential love – a love that excludes as well as includes and therefore fails to reflect the wholeness of God’s love. Yet, this is the commandment Jesus has given us that we be the manifestation of the wholeness of God’s love on this earth.

What was once a difficulty has now become for us a human impossibility for how can we love everyone with the wholeness of God’s love? Simply put we cannot – and that is why the origin of this love must be God. We must allow God within us to manifest by discovering God and ourselves within each person we meet. This is the message of Jesus – the foundation for all that we were to learn – we are to love one another as Christ loved us.

Being able to love as Jesus loves is changing how we envision the love of God. For how can we share God’s love if we do not understand it ourselves? God is love and not a wrathful, vengeful force. God does not require anything of us in order to receive Divine love. Most of us have come to accept that somewhere along the line. But perhaps it’s not about how God loves you but about how you love God. I like what Neale Donald Walsch has to say about this in his book Friendship with God: “All this time you may have thought that the big question is, Can God love you unconditionally, but the big question is, Can you love God unconditionally. Because you can only receive God’s love in the way you give God yours.”

How can we love others unconditionally if we place conditions on our love for God? Think about it for a minute. Do you only love God when you believe your prayers have been answered or when things are going well? Or do you love God in the bad times as well? To be totally loving is to be fully present and fully aware in every single moment. This is how God loves us. For God abides in us. The question is not whether God is always present with us but are we always present with God?

To love as Jesus loves, we continue the works of Christ. Soren Kierkegaard explains this so well in book Works of Love: “To the Christian love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an un-Christian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love, Christ’s love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.”

Christian love is not about the words we speak or a feeling we develop in our heart. Christian love is about rising every morning and doing the work of love. Allowing God to manifest within us requires that we strive for the good of the whole with every encounter, in every situation, with each person we meet. In the words of Kierkegaard: “To love God is to love oneself truly; to help another person to love God is to love another person; to be helped by another person to love God is to be loved.”

Mother Deb