Young Love

Jer 2:2
I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. RSV

There is a wonderful line of dialogue in some movie I once saw. I think it was two men speaking. One was older and other younger. Neither one was a kid. The topic was the younger man’s relationship with his wife. “I just don’t love her anymore.” “Did you ever love her?” “O, yes, very much!” “Then remember back until you can find the place where the love died. That is where you start again.”

The Roman Catholics have a notion they call “mortal sin.” It is a sin that kills innocence – it kills Divine Grace. It stops the process of sanctification. It creates in us an aversion to God. While I cannot follow our Catholic brothers and sister when they claim that our sin reverses or negates Divine grace, I can certainly affirm that sin will create in us an aversion to God. We begin to avoid God. We might even create silly and pretentious ways to “manage God.”

Un-confessed sin strains love. This is true with a human/human relationship and a human/Divine relationship. When a husband fails to “come clean” with his wife on some small deceit or transgression, then there is a small estrangement between them. These small sins add up and estrangement grows to the point where love suffers fatally. The love just dies.

It is the act of remembering that restores lost love. Consider the Lord’s Supper. We are called to “Do this, remembering me.” The grace of the Lord’s Table lies in the reconciliation that happens when sin meets the full truth of Jesus Christ. Salvation comes from the two great aspects of Divine Holiness. First is the purity of God, which shines on our impurity and reveals our sin. Second is the deepest purity of God, which displays and demonstrates Divine love and mercy. It is here, that sins are forgiven and love restored.

 

Never once is God said to be reconciled to man; it is always man who is reconciled to God.

William Barclay (1907–1978)

 

To reconcile man with man and not with God is to reconcile no one at all.

Thomas Merton (1915–1968)

Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down his life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.

William Cowper (1731–1800)

Forgiveness is not that stripe which says, “I will forgive, but not forget.” It is not to bury the hatchet with the handle sticking out of the ground, so you can grasp it the minute you want it.

Dwight Lyman Moody (1837–1899)

 If God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than him.

C. S. Lewis (1898–1963)