Framing God's Story: Disinterested Love, the Way of Escape

In the previous three posts (here, here, here) I have shared an alternative way of viewing God's story of His creation and love of humanity. Today I will conclude this series with thoughts concerning how we escape from this awful slavery to the fear of death (self-preservation).

Born mortal, we are all slaves to fear...particularly fear of death in its many forms. The satan uses this deep fear against us; it pushes and pulls us into sinful living because of our panic at losing our life (be that our actual physical life or losing that which gives us a sense of significance and permanence in this age).

In becoming fully human like us, Jesus faced this fear of death. At every turn He succeeded in living free from its dominion by never yielding to the temptation to save His own life at the expense of another; in other words, through self-giving love. His death on the cross was the culmination of a life lived in love, choosing the life of "the other" over His own life when faced with that choice. By so doing, He broke the stronghold that the fear of death held over humanity.

We who are in Christ are empowered by His presence in us to overcome bondage to fear of death in the same way. Theologian John Romanides says: "The salvation of man is dependent upon how much, under the guidance of God, he is capable of exercising himself in the cultivation of a genuine, unselfish, and unconstrained love for God and his fellow man...Just as God, above all, is free of every need and self-interest, the spiritual man who has the Spirit struggles and becomes perfected in the love according to Christ, love that is delivered of all need and self-interest."

And so it is in our struggle to love purely and without self-interest as Jesus loved that we are little by little perfected in love and therein delivered from fear. Fear is cast out by love, and as fear and death loses its hold over us, sinful practices drop off. This is the process of salvation that we struggle to walk out together daily with the Spirit and with one another. (Scripture at times calls this 'dying to the false self' with its self interest and self preservation.)

May the Spirit of Jesus help us understand our dilemma and enter actively into the struggle to learn to love disinterestedly and thereby experience increasing freedom from the tyranny of fear and of its fruit, sinful living.