Love as Life and Life as Communion.
There is a unique consciousness of life that is experienced in love. Love is communion. It is participation in the very existence of another … and this participation, this communion is experienced and understood as really living.
The euphoric love that is experienced between two people is but a mere shadow cast from a dimly lit candle of the true life experienced by communion with God through Jesus Christ.
Love is a realm of life, a type of life that couldn’t have been imagined hitherto. To love is to truly live. To love is to participate in the life of another in a way that truly fuses two existences into one and in this fusing there is a realm of living, a type of life released which is nowhere else to be found. This realm of living, this type of life is indicative of and signifies the reality that all life stems from love, from communion.
When God formed man out of the dust of the ground, He breathed the breath of life into mankind and he became a living being. This is an act of communion. It is a participation and it is an intimate act of love. God could have spoken life into man in the same way he spoke all creation into existence. In the same way he spoke life into every other creature. But he didn’t. God grants mankind (His image bearers) life through an intimate act of communion. He breathes the breath of life into man. Every one of us is probably familiar with it looks like when someone is trying to breathe a breath into someone else. When someone administers CPR, along with the chest compressions, they must breathe breath into the person … they must try to breathe life into that person.
That act of breathing breath into someone else is an intimate act. It bears a striking similarity to what is one of the most intimate acts of personal communion between two people—it bears a striking similarity to a passionate kiss. It is close, it is personal, it is prolonged and it comes in a moment of vulnerability. And it is in this way that God makes man alive … through communion. God, in the very creation of mankind, demonstrates the intimate nature of the relationship between Himself and those who bear His image. It is this communion with God that makes man alive. When this communion is lost … so too is this life.
The fact that intimacy and love between two people opens up a qualitatively different form of life, a realm of living unable to be experienced apart from this love is a residual effect of the very nature of mankind as created in the image of God. The euphoric love that is experienced between two people is but a mere shadow cast from a dimly lit candle of the true life experienced by communion with God through Jesus Christ. True life, life found in communion with God, is not dependent on finding another person to love (that is merely a penultimate sign meant to point us to an ultimate reality). Instead it is offered freely by God—God who has created mankind for communion with Himself. God offers to grant and restore communion with Himself, He offers life and fulfillment in His presence and He offers it freely through the person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ.
John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes in Him who sent me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”