What we call creation was God’s first act of self-sacrifice: it was the sacrifice of God’s solitude. If we think of it at all, we tend to think of creation as God’s gaining something: call it companionship. But thinking of it that way posits a lack in God, or a desire for something outside of God’s own perfection, and surely that is a mistake. What we are left to think is that the nature of God simply is sacrificial. Call that nature ‘love.’ And there being nothing other than God, love sacrificed itself.

God’s second act of self-sacrifice was the Cross.