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Works of Love XIX: “Learning Love”

[From Part II, Chapter X: “The Work of Love in Praising Love”]

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love…. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:8, 10 (ESV)

Even as Works of Love draws to a close, there is still infinitely more that can be said about love. This one book is not enough to guide us completely in understanding the nature of Christian love. How, then, do we proceed when the book is over, the study is finished? How do we continue to pursue and understand love? Kierkegaard engages this question in a chapter on the importance of praising love—which we might (roughly) equate to “appreciating love.” Kierkegaard has two points to make about how we should appreciate love. We will cover the first one here, and the second on in the next post.
Kierkegaard’s first claim is that “the work of praising love must be done inwardly in self-renunciation [or self-denial].” He writes,
“Only in self-renunciation can one effectually praise love, for God is love, and only in self-renunciation can a human being hold fast God fast. What a human being of himself knows about love is very superficial; he must get to know the deeper love from God, that is, in self-denial he must become what every human being can become…, an instrument for God.”[1]
This is a very important concept for us to understand. Kierkegaard is saying that if we want to truly appreciate love for what it is, we must approach it in self-denial. What does this mean? We must accept that our knowledge of love is imperfect. I do not fully understand love. I may not even partially understand what love is truly supposed to look like. Only God, who is all-knowing and who is himself love, truly understands the nature of love.

Why is this so important? Because so often we set up our own definitions of what love is, and then we either mold God to fit that definition or we dismiss him as unloving. These days it is popular to define love as “giving a person what they want,” “validating their every opinion,” or “always seeking others’ happiness at any cost.” Many times, and in many ways, God has acted against that definition—both in scripture and in our own lives—and we decide that it wasn’t God who did such a thing, and if it was, then God isn’t good.

If we take the witness of scripture seriously, then we believe that God is love, and that we have an accurate record of his deeds among us. God was love when he sent his son to die on the cross. God was love when he sent an angel to kill the firstborn of Egypt. God was love when he delivered the Jews from the Amalekites. God was love when he ordered Joshua to wipe out the Canaanites, man, woman and child. Now, how we make sense of these tensions is by no means simple or easy, but we must wrestle with them nonetheless. The fact that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is love can never become an everyday fact. We should never become used to the fact that God is love and loves us. Kierkegaard writes,
“Therefore every human being can get to know everything about love, just as every human being can get to know that he is, as every human being is, loved by God. The difference is only that some consider (which does not seem so remarkable to me) this thought to be more than adequate even for the longest life, so that even in the seventieth year they do not think they have marveled over it enough; and others, however, consider (which seems to me very queer and reprehensible) this thought to be very insignificant, since to be loved by God is no more than what every man shares—as if it therefore were less significant.”[2]
It should always amaze us, overwhelm us, confuse us, and challenge us, this fact that God is love that he loves all. We should always be confounded by this fact because there is always more to learn about God and about love. When the God of love becomes passé, then we have ceased to learn from him. And then we have lost the point.

Dear Father,
I so often think that I have everything figured out. I so often expect you to conform to my understanding of love, feeble though it is. Put in my heart a hunger for knowledge of you. Make me unsatisfied with the platitudes and falsehoods that I do often embrace instead of your truth. Show me the true nature of love. Overcome my assumptions and preconceptions and show me your wonders, morning by morning.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who showed us your love on the cross,
Amen.




[1] Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love. Harper Perennial, 2009, p. 334
[2] Ibid., 334-5.
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