Loving God

Reflections from Dr. Peter Toon

All types of Christians appear to believe that there is a duty laid upon us all to love others, especially those in need. Yet in this agreement there is disagreement as to what precisely it meant by “loving one’s neighbor as oneself.”

In contrast, there is no agreement that there is a duty – at least on this earth – for Christians to love God. Some say that all we can achieve in this world is to believe in God and to trust him. Others say that Love is God and that in being loving to anyone on this earth we are loving God.

Perhaps the insights of St Bernard of Clairvaux can help us. In his little book on the love of God [De Diligendo Dei], he offers us a somewhat stylized scheme (to help us remember) of four stages in the growth in loving God; but the truth in it is profound and well worth pondering.

Self for self; God for self; God for God & self for God.

1. The place where all of us begin is the loving of one’s self. However, in this position a man will come to realize for all kinds of reasons, not least the good of human life together in community, that he must have some love for his neighbor. And, in seeking to fulfill this obligation, he will recognize that without God’s help he cannot really begin to live a meaningful life and care for his fellow man. Though he does not know this the image of God in man is marred by sin and thus functions only imperfectly at this stage; but yet it is the means of inner awakening and desire for God through Christ.


2. As soon as the man (baptized Christian) begins to understand the need of God for the satisfactory conduct of his life, then he will begin to love God. However, he will be loving God not for God’s sake but for his own, for the help that he needs and receives from God to live a reasonably satisfactory life. And, regrettably, this stage of loving God can be as far as he progresses in the Christian life, even as he prays, attends church and seeks to keep God’s commandments.


3. In loving God for what he gives and provides, a man may begin (through the influence of the means of grace) to see that God as the LORD is supremely lovable in his Being, Nature, Attributes, Revelation, Reconciliation and Redemption. That is he is supremely lovable not primarily for what he bestows, but for who he really is towards his creatures and for his amazing Beauty and Glory. In progressing to this state, the baptized believer does not cease to love God for his blessings and gifts. Rather, there is joined to this loving a deeper loving which adores God for who he is. It is a loving of the Father through the love of the Son and with the love provided by the Holy Ghost. And, it is never individualistic for it is always personal but within the koinonia, the fellowship, of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.


4. The fourth stage, which cannot be wholly fulfilled in this life, is when a man loves himself only for the sake of God. That is, he participates free of all selfishness, in the love of God towards his creatures and thus specifically towards himself. And this loving can only be fully known and experienced when the Christian is redeemed, that is when he is perfected and glorified in his resurrection body and a member of the heavenly Jerusalem. That is, when he is fully restored in the image and likeness of God, and being such, he is perfectly appreciative of, as well as a channel of, the love of God and so he loves in the name of God, the Holy Trinity, what God loves. And he does so through, in and with Christ who is the perfect Image of God and the One Mediator between God and man.

One advantage, amongst others, of this scheme is that it integrates eros and agape, by seeing the latter as a fulfillment of the former. That is, it begins where each of us is at the beginning – outside the direct influence of the means of grace and traces our path into the ecstasy of being overwhelmed by the Love that unites the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. ( See further C.S.Lewis, The Four Loves. ) And it leads us on to where we are called to be – loving God both for WHO he is, and in union with him by the Spirit, sharing in his perfect loving of his creatures and people.

Too many of us, I regret to state, seem to be permanently in stage 2, loving God only because he is the One whom we need to live fulfilled or satisfactory lives. I suspect (and if I am wrong, God forgive me) that our modern dumbed-down worship services actually seek to place people and keep them in stage 2!

Trinity III, 2005