In today’s world where the love of God is often distorted into permissiveness or sentimentality, the Holy Church proclaims a truth far older and far holier—that divine love is covenantal, cruciform, and consuming. It is not a feeling but a reality, not abstract but sacramental. This brief article reflects on the nature of God’s love as revealed in the Bible, manifested in the Incarnation, and experienced through obedience, worship, and the holy mysteries within the life of the Church.
God’s love is neither indulgent nor sentimental. It is not capricious nor emotive, but unchanging, just, and wholly in accordance with His divine nature. The Incarnation of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ is the supreme revelation of this love—not a response to human worthiness, but a manifestation of divine mercy. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16), not to confirm man in his fallen passions, but to lift him from the mire of corruption. The Cross is the measure of this love—rooted not in permissiveness, but in the willing self-offering of the Son of God for the healing of man. It is not God who is reconciled to man, but man who is restored to God. Divine love is not permissive; it is ascetical and cruciform.
This love is catholic in scope but not without boundary. It is catholic in the true and ancient sense of the word—καθολική, meaning whole, complete, lacking in nothing—because the love of God is extended to all peoples, all nations, all tongues, and all tribes. But this universality is not a blank cheque for every belief, custom, or spiritual experiment to be received as equally pleasing to God. The love of the Lord is not permissive, as modern men imagine love must be. He does not smile upon error, nor does He hold the lies of demons on equal footing with the truth revealed from Heaven. His love is holy, and His holiness is consuming. He desires that all should be saved, but salvation is not on the terms of man. It is always on God’s terms—through repentance, through the Cross, through the narrow gate. God calls all to Himself, indeed, but He does not affirm all paths. It is a lie from the pit to suggest that every religion is a road to God, or that all who claim sincerity are walking in the light. The love of God cannot be divorced from the truth of God. The Lord Jesus Christ did not say, “I am a way, a truth, a life,” but declared without hesitation, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). To speak otherwise is to blaspheme His Gospel. The love of God is not indifferent to doctrine. It does not wink at heresy. It does not embrace schism. It does not commune with paganism. Those who twist the message of divine charity into a pretext for doctrinal relativism are no better than serpents in the garden—speaking half-truths, asking subtle questions, leading souls into ruin under the guise of kindness.
The love of our God is not to be confused with the demonic counterfeit of tolerance—this word so exalted by the world that it now functions as a substitute for both faith and reason. Tolerance, in the modern sense, is nothing more than cowardice dressed in virtue’s clothing. The demons would love nothing more than a god who tolerates all—every abomination, every false teaching, every inversion of created order. But the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is not tolerant in that way. He is long-suffering, yes. He is patient, yes. He delays His righteous judgement to grant space for repentance. But He does not bless what is accursed. He does not leave men in their darkness. His love wounds before it heals. It lays bare the rottenness in the heart of man so that it may be cleansed, not ignored.
The Lord Jesus Christ is not one shepherd among many; He is the Shepherd, the only true Shepherd, who lays down His life for the sheep. All others are hirelings, and many are wolves dressed in robes and mitres, devouring the flock while speaking softly of unity and inclusion. The Church is not a democracy, nor a religious marketplace. It is not a spiritual association bound by feeling or common interest. The Church is the very Body of Christ, the Ark of Salvation, the pillar and ground of the truth. To be in the Church is not to share a vague Christian sentiment—it is to be grafted into the living vine through Holy Baptism, to partake of the true and life-giving mysteries, to confess the faith once delivered to the saints, without corruption or innovation.
When men go astray—and they do go astray—it is not God who has moved, but they who have turned their backs upon Him. The sheep wander. Some flee out of fear. Some are enticed by strange pastures. Others are driven by pride, refusing to hear the voice of the Shepherd. But the love of God does not permit them to remain in that wandering. He seeks them, but not to confirm them in their error. He seeks them to rescue them, to bring them back, to break their pride, to restore their sanity. He binds their wounds, yes, but He does not call their sickness health. He carries them on His shoulders, yes, but He does not bless their wandering. He returns them to the flock—to the Church, to the fold, to the one place where salvation is found. Anything less is not love. It is betrayal.
God’s love is not transactional or legalistic but covenantal in the ancient, unshakable sense of the word&mmmdash;a sacred, binding union sealed not by ink or formulae, but by blood—real, holy, innocent blood. The modern mind, corrupted by legalism and bureaucratic reductionism, imagines covenant to be akin to contract, as though man were bartering with the Almighty. But this is alien to the Scriptures and the witness of the Church. The covenant of God is a personal bond initiated by divine initiative and sustained by grace. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee” (Jeremias 31:3). His love is not an agreement between equals, but a gracious condescension whereby the immortal God binds Himself to a fickle and fallen people—not to indulge them, but to restore them, to dwell among them, to make them His own. This covenant was prefigured in the Law and the Prophets but is consummated in the New Testament—not a “new document,” as some Protestants blasphemously reduce it, but a new covenant, sealed in the Blood of the incarnate Son. It is not a mere proclamation but a union—a union of the faithful with Christ in His Body, the Church, through the holy mysteries. The Divine Liturgy is not a theatre of remembrance, not a symbolic pageant, but the very re-presentation—mystical yet true—of the one sacrifice of Golgotha. “Once and for all” does not mean “once and gone”; it means eternally efficacious, outside time yet made present within time, again and again, by divine economy. On the holy altar, heaven and earth meet. The Lamb stands as slain, and the faithful commune not with a memory but with the very Body and Blood of the risen Christ. This is not an idea of love; it is Love Himself, crucified and risen, placed upon the tongue of the penitent.
The only proper response to such divine charity is obedience—real, difficult, crucifying obedience. “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). The love of God is not gauged by tears or sensations. It is not found in sentimental language or religious theatrics. It is found in obedience—costly, unwavering, humble obedience. The faith of the saints was not borne on feelings but on sacrifice. They did not speak of God in comfortable terms; they followed Him into the furnace, into prison, into martyrdom. They fasted when the flesh cried for comfort. They prayed when sleep beckoned. They stood against emperors, heresiarchs, and devils. They died daily. This is what it means to love God.
God’s love does not tolerate sin. It burns it out. It does not say, “Come as you are and remain as you are,” but rather, “Come, and be crucified with Me.” The fire of divine love is not a campfire to warm oneself by; it is the fire of the burning bush, which blazes without consuming, and yet purifies all who draw near with fear and repentance. The Christian who abides in this love does so by remaining in the Church—not the modernist shell of it, but the true Church—ascetical, unchanging, guided by the Fathers, rooted in the mysteries, faithful to the Apostolic Tradition. Such a soul walks in divine friendship not through ease, but through struggle. It is in the furnace of obedience, fasting, repentance, and noetic prayer that the love of God is received. This love is not vague benevolence; it is the fire that descended at Pentecost, that dwelt in the Theotokos, that shone from the wounds of the martyrs. It is the same fire that shall judge the world—terrible for those who hate it, but salvation for those who endure it.
Brethren, God’s love is not a contract or emotional sentiment, but a sacred covenant sealed in blood—fulfilled in Christ and made present in the Divine Liturgy. In the Eucharist, the faithful receive not a symbol but Christ Himself, truly and mystically. This divine love demands obedience, not vague admiration. The saints loved God through suffering, sacrifice, and fidelity to truth. God’s love does not excuse sin—it purifies, heals, and sanctifies those who remain in the Holy Church, guided by Holy Tradition and the mysteries. It is a consuming fire that saves only those who do not resist it.
May God bless you +
Fr. Charles
7 (24) May 2025
Martyr Sava Stratelates and Holy Nun Elizabeth
