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Love and Forgiveness
The unconditional love of God for us and forgiveness of our sins are the two sides of the same coin and Jesus is the embodiment, emblem and concrete manifestation of that covenantal relationship. The one who loves forgives and the one who forgives loves too. To love is to forgive and to forgive is to promote life. Forgiveness is the natural fruit of love.
Love and forgiveness took flesh in Jesus and made manifest and concretised on the cross on Good Friday.
Forgiveness is, theologically speaking, the genetic make-up of the universe. The universe is structured according to divine mercy and clemency. Forgiveness is the DNA of human existence and proper human relationships.
We are also invited to a laying down of our lives for others, so that there will be life the way Jesus lived it. Ultimately all the suffering, all the hardships, pain, difficulties, frustrations we undergo have a meaning in Christ. Our daily struggles are neither senseless, nor useless, nor meaningless. God exists, God matters and hence human life, pain, emptiness, suffering and difficulties too matter. There is no human predicament or human condition that Jesus does not comprehend or understand. Jesus is closer to us than we are to ourselves. He lives more intimately in us than we can ever recognize. Christ is the source of our happiness
and the very end of all our aspirations and inspirations.
With the coming of Jesus into our world, God has no future apart from human beings. God’s life is necessarily and decisively tied up with us humans in and through Jesus. God can never abandon us now no matter how sinful or pathetic we become. This is the Good News Jesus brought to us, that is, the Creator of the universe cannot come up with any future plan by forgetting or neglecting us.
So now, is there any reason for us to be afraid of our future? Apocalyptic anxiety about our future is not a Christian virtue.
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