On the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection, Jesus did not just tell us that he loves us. He showed us. It is ironic but the Word of God (John 1:1) wasn't an author. He was a carpenter (Mark 6:3). The carpenter built his most apocalyptic revelation into the bombshell of revelation that erupted out of the violent collision between himself and the evil that we did to him that took place on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection.
God appeals to our faculty of rationality not to our faculty of obedience. Our faculty of obedience is broken. It has been broken since Adam and Eve. Furthermore, God does not make his appeal to us with words. He appeals to us by putting us in intimate contact not with words but with the truth itself - both the sweet truth and the sour truth.
