Love.
Am I serious? Yes. All too often I hear Christians and others talking about the love of Jesus or the love of God is ways that deny the specific nature of the love of God revealed in the scripture.
Love is no doubt a biblical word. Even more importantly it is a God word, a Jesus word. So why should we stop using a word so central to our God, our faith, our scriptures? I would suggest we should stop because the common English word love has a cultural meanings that can no longer bear the weight of what is meant by love as God reveals it. Love in our world has two prime meanings. One meaning is a fuzzy feeling inside your heart mixed with a rabid lust inside your pants. The other meaning is unconditional acceptance. I will focus on the latter, though the first is toxic to true love as well.
So what are the cultural arguments usually seated upon some broad understanding of God’s love or Christ’s love. Sexual aberrations (both of the heterosexual and homosexual types varieties) are to be embraced because God loves all people.   False religions and their nonextant gods are to be warmly tolerated, even celebrated because Jesus said love your enemies.  All sins and falsehoods are to be allowed to remain without correction because Jesus’ love accepts all people unconditionally.
And yet, God repeatedly and clearly teaches that sexuality outside of marriage is abhorrent to him. God says that those who present any religion which does not revolve around the cross of Jesus and the grace of God are accursed. Jesus tells the women caught in adultery (after forgiving her) to go and sin no more. He says that having put away falsehood, each of his children are to speak the truth with his neighbor.
The love of God, the love of Jesus, is understood only in the Father’s sending of Jesus.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The love of God is the calling of people away from peril and to paradise. God’s love of people is not expressed in embracing their perversions but rather in offering them perfection. God’s love of people does not allow him to let humanity worship pions but offers them a right relationship with the Potent. God love of people does not allow him to leave people wallowing in pretense, but allows them to walk in the precepts of truth.
The love of God is not unconditional acceptance and tolerance. It is unconditional grace offered to all sinners who will not reject it.
So instead of the love of God perhaps we ought to talk more specifically about the ways God shows love to humanity. The creation of God. The rebuke of God. The discipline of God. The grace of God. The mercy of God. The forgiveness of God.
Can’t rid your parlance of the word love? Maybe we should not. It is a Jesus word. But we must speak about the love of God with sufficient specificity that those who are listening cannot mistake God’s love for their own definitions of the same.
