Jain Journal 2007 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 15

16
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.23
JAIN JOURNAL: VOL-XLII, NO.1 JULY. 2007
Life is the gift to the beloved, and love gives life to all. In Christianity the life-ethics seem highly to depend on the love of God that is embodied in the thoughts, the words and the deeds of Jesus Christ who says (John 14:6, 9): "I am the way and the truth and the life,... Anyone who has seen me has seen the father."24
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
We love because he first loved us.
If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.25
These words from I John 4:16, 19-21 suggest that love is the primary Commandment of the Christianity: "My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.26 (John 15:12)
The practice of love will consequently shun becoming violent and killing, and it may be allowed to say that "the respect for life" comes from love. Love is first sent from God to Man and next should be sent back to God and His creation from Man with thanks, which must be a sourse of the thoughts on the conservation of nature in Western countries.
23. The same version as that of the note 21, p.909.
24. The New Testament (New International Version), The Gideon International in Japan, 1984, p.297.
25. Ditto, p.657.
26. Ditto, p.300.