T he phrase “ the love of God,” when used by Christians, al most always refers to God’s love for us. We must remember that it can also mean our love for God. The first and greatest command ment is that we should love God with all the power of our total personality. Though all love origi nates in God and is for that reason God’s own love, yet we are permit ted to catch and reflect back that love in such manner that it becomes our love indeed, in much the same way that sunlight reflected from the moon becomes moonlight. The Christian’s love for God has by some religious thinkers been di vided into two kinds, the love of gratitude and the love of excellence. The love that springs out of grati tude is found in such passages as Psalm 116:1, “ I love the L ord , be cause he hath heard my voice and my supplications,” and 1 John 4:19, “We love him, because he first loved us.” This is an entirely proper and legitimate kind of love and is quite acceptable to God even though it is among the most ele mentary and immature of the re ligious emotions. Love that is the result of gratitude for favors re ceived cannot but have a certain element of selfishness in it. At least it is on the borderline of selfishness and is difficult to distinguish from it, the blunt fact being that it is roused only by benefits received and does not exist apart from them. A higher kind of love is the love of excellence. This love is awak ened by consideration of God’s glor ious Being, and has in it a strong element of admiration. “My be loved is white and ruddy, the chief- est among ten thousand. His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely” (Song of Solomon 5:10,16). This love of the divine excellen cies differs from the love that springs from gratitude in that its reasons are more elevated and the element of selfishness is reduced al most to the vanishing point. We should note, however, that the two have one thing in common: they can both give a reason for their ex istence. Love that can offer rea sons is a rational thing and has not attained to a state of complete pur ity. It is not perfect love. We must carry our love to God
3 Degrees of Love
by A. W . T ozer
a suprarational element that cannot and does not attempt to give reasons for its existence. It says not “ I love because” ; it only whispers “ I love.” Perfect love knows no because. There is a place in the religious experience where we love God for Himself alone, with never a thought of His benefits. And there is a place where the heart does not reason from admiration to affection. True, it all may begin lower dotvn, but it quickly rises to the height of blind adoration where reason is sus pended and the heart worships in unreasoning blessedness. It can only exclaim, “Holy, holy, holy,” while scarcely knowing what it means. If this should all seem too mys tical, too unreal, we offer no proof and make no effort to defend our position. This can be understood only by those who have experienced it. By the rank and file or present- day Christians it will be rejected or shrugged off as preposterous. So be it. Some will read and will rec ognize an accurate description of the sunlit peaks where they have been for at least brief periods and to which they long often to return. And such will need no proof. (In cluded in “ The Root of the Right eous,” Christian Publications, Inc., Harrisburg, Pa.) END.
further than love of gratitude and love of excellence. There is an ad vanced stage of love which goes far beyond either. Down on the level of the merely human it is altogether common to find love that rises above both grati tude and admiration. The mother of a subnormal child, for instance, may love her unfortunate child with an emotional attachment al together impossible to understand. The child excites no gratitude in her breast, for all the benefits have flowed the other way; the helpless infant has been nothing but a bur den from the time it was born. Neither can the mother find in such a child any excellence to ad mire, for there is none. Yet her love is something wonderful and terrible to see. Her tender feelings have swallowed the child and as similated it to her own inward be ing to such a degree that she feels herself one with it. And indeed she is one with it emotionally. Her life and that of the child are more certainly united than they were during that sacred period before she gave it birth. For always the union achieved by hearts is more beautiful than anything that can be experienced by flesh and blood. The sum of what we say is that there is in the higher type of love
11
OCTOBER 1956
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