Jesus A Gospel Of Love: True justice, like wisdom, always has a potentially prickly way about it. Who could have predicted Jesus’ reaction when the ‘righteous’ onlookers noticed the woman wasting such expensive perfume? Not many in their day; not many in ours, either.

Love reflects this awkward-to-approach justice; it divines motives, separating worth from waste, sanctity from sacrilege.

Jesus is found pouncing on the injustice; he is that woman’s only defender, even as he is our only defender when we love extravagantly yet have it thrown back in our face.

There is a conviction in the encouragement of Jesus’ love toward us as we act in love. Like the little children that were spurned in Matthew 19:13-15, Jesus will encourage us by leaping to our defence.

But this is something that can only be felt – a thing that the Holy Spirit disposes toward us. As we understand our motives for purity, those that are dispatched by others in callousness, we receive the compassion of the Lord. We seek it and we receive it.

FEELING THIS LOVE OF JESUS’

What is a bizarre mystery, a tantalising issue, is the feeling of God’s loving Presence in and through us during such times.

Of course, we cannot describe it, write up a method statement to replicate it, or show it to someone. Feeling the love of Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is something only God can make happen. That is, apart from a wholly surrendered approach that’s exclusively ready to receive such love.

Such exclusivity is the requirement.

If we hold back we risk the experience because faith has not yet spent itself on our behalf. Still, God is not stingy. Feeling this love of Jesus’, when there’s sparingly little love elsewhere, can be the most surprising of pleasant gifts that arrives just in time, despite our doubting.