By Kevin “Mac” McClure
If we’re to be at our best, we’ve got to keep the main thing, the main thing. I am going to suggest that this means something more than what you might be thinking. Don’t get me wrong- Jesus is the Main Thing! His Gospel is truly the main thing. But in terms of what that means experientially and how it can impact humanity, the main thing is experiencing Christ and His Gospel. This means experiencing God’s essence. Real Gospel proclamation leads to this. His essence is agape love (see 1 John 4:8,16). This love is what drove the incarnation. It’s the heart of what it means to experience the Gospel. If you don’t experience the Gospel, can you be a Christian?
When I speak of experiencing the Gospel, i.e. experiencing God’s love, I am not suggesting that each of us has an identical experience or that one person’s experience is some kind of template for everyone else. I am aiming to say that experiencing the Gospel is more than giving it intellectual assent. It involves receiving the divine life. John the Apostle seems to equate believing with receiving (John 1:12). Receiving is what I mean by experiencing.
Let’s get back to God’s essence. When we say that something is God’s essence, we are not talking about a mere attribute like omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence or any other such thing. We are talking about what defines God more than anything else. We are talking about what makes God tick. Not all Christians agree with my perspective that God’s essence is love, in spite of the fact that John the Apostle said, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8,16).
When some Christians think of God’s essence, they think of God’s sovereignty, but love is not unimportant to them. They might ask the question, “How does a sovereign God demonstrate His love?” I think a better question (and I’m not the first to pose it) is, “How does a loving God demonstrate His sovereignty?”
Our space does not afford us the opportunity to explore the differences between these outlooks in depth. If you believe that God’s essence is His sovereignty, I’d love to hear from you and learn why you believe this. For now, I’m going to act like my readers are on board that God’s essence is agape love.
If His essence is love, as I think John the Apostle argues, then it should become our essence, don’t you think? After all, Jesus and Paul exhort us to grow in the likeness of God the Son (Luke 6:40; Romans 8:29; Galatians 4:19). Paul also told us to be “imitators of God” (Ephesians 5:1).
I point this out to say that since we need to aim to be like God, that is, to embody agape love, then we need to understand that our best chance of helping people who don’t know God to know Him, is to expose them to His essence. More on this next week!