God is a loving God

This week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson, titled “Everlasting Punishment,” boldly states that “the Christian Science God is universal, eternal, divine Love, which changeth not and causeth no evil, disease, nor death” (Science and Health, p. 140, citation 1).

The Lesson confirms that the concept of God as a loving Deity runs throughout the Bible, continually reminding us that He is not a punisher; that God loves and cares for His creation.

For example, when the Hebrews were held captive in Babylon, Jeremiah the prophet assured the people, “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee” (31:3, cit. 1). Centuries later, St. Paul declared to the Christians in Rome, “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38, 39, cit. 5).

Yet sin and punishment still frighten and fascinate humanity in spite of such Biblical assurances. However, Section II repeatedly urges the reader to wake up. First Corinthians commands, “Awake to righteousness, and sin not” (15:34, cit. 11). But the Psalmist wrote, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness” (17:5, cit. 9). And another psalm declares, “I will sing and . . . . I myself will awake early” (57:7, 8, cit. 8). Science and Health adds that the awakening from the dream of mortality “is the forever coming of Christ” (p. 230, cit. 11).

Examples of Christ’s coming are seen in both Sections IV and V, when scribes and Pharisees challenge Jesus. First, they want to see if he will follow Moses’ law and condone the stoning of “a woman taken in adultery.” This story makes the most of Isaiah’s vivid imagery, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (1:18, cit. 16). And Jesus’ well-known reply to those accusing the woman cut to the quick: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Comforting her, Jesus provided the all-embracing solution to wrongdoing, forgoing any sense of punishment: “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:1–11, cit. 18). Related passages in Science and Health clarify this: “We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal”; and, “The way to escape the misery of sin is to cease sinning” (p. 497, cit. 20; p. 327, cit. 15).

In Section V, the Pharisees and scribes again look to fault Jesus—this time when he heals a paralytic man. The story is in the book of Luke (5:18–25, cit. 20). But it’s also found in Mark’s Gospel (2:1–12). In both tellings, the crowd around Jesus prevents the man’s friends from entering the house, so they let him down through the roof. Breaking up a simply constructed rooftop in Capernaum, as described in Mark, would have been easy. On the other hand Luke, a Gentile, thinks in terms of a tile Mediterranean roof that would have been most unlikely in Israel, and more difficult to take apart. In each account, however, the man is let down right in front of Jesus, who says to him, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” The Pharisees and scribes accuse Jesus, saying, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Yet, at Jesus’ command the man gets up, fully healed.

It’s hard for us to conceptualize the astonishment that devout Jews felt when Jesus not only talked about forgiving sins but sat and ate with sinners and publicans, prostitutes and criminals. Publicans were Jews themselves; they collected taxes, handing over the required amount to the Romans and keeping for themselves any extra they could get from their fellow Jews. They were often wealthy and were considered traitors; it was against all Jewish moral law that Jesus ate with both publicans and sinners. Was it that he saw a Godlike man, untouched by sin? Or, was it because, as he said, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mark 2:17, cit. 22)?

The climax of much of Jesus’ teaching comes as the Pharisees ask when the “kingdom of God” will come. He gives them the startling reply that the kingdom “is within you” (see Luke 17:21, cit. 23). All the good, the perfection of God’s kingdom, is within each one of us—not evil or evildoing, not disease, not even death. This would eliminate the need or possibility of condemnation or punishment.

“Divine Love is infinite,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy. “Therefore all that really exists is in and of God, and manifests His love” (Science and Health, p. 340, cit. 27).

Beth Carey, a Christian Science practitioner, lives in Elsah, Illinois.

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