Hey Church!

I thought it would be worthwhile to reflect on one particular idea that appears often in modern worship songs: telling God, “I love you.” During the closing song last Sunday, we sang, “All my love, all my love, all my love: you can have it all” a number of times. I realize that some of you may find that sentiment perfectly natural and heartwarming, while others struggle to make it meaningful. 

Whenever we sing about loving God, we should keep in mind that love has more than one meaning. We can sing “I love you, Lord” as an expression of our heart’s tender affection for Him (classically, eros – a romantic kind of love). The Song of Solomon encourages us to see our relationship with our Redeemer not as mere contract, but as a Bride delighting in her Groom. Men, in particular, often find the “Bride” metaphor unhelpful, and some may even find it offputting. Nevertheless, God wired us all with a desire for union and completion in Himself. It requires an imagination of faith to embrace the beauty of that image. 

Love of God can also be expressed as a sort of brotherly bond (phileo). For me, this is the kind of love that comes to mind when I think of the long and difficult battles God and I have endured together. They say there’s no deeper friendship than those that have been forged in the trenches of war. The same can be true of our affection for God when we remember how He has led us through life’s valleys.

Another sense of the word refers to the desiring, or pursuing, aspect of our souls. We could sing the same words, “I love you, Lord,” and mean “I will set you as the first desire of my heart; over and against the gods of this world that vie for my innermost affections and attention, I choose to reorder my disordered loves until they are centered on you.” It was love in this desire-reorienting sense that I, personally, envisioned in my heart while I sang, “All my love… you can have it all” last Sunday.   

As an aside, consider why some of these “love” songs are so repetitive. Would it not have been enough to say, “All my love, you can have it all” once? Why do we sing it 6 or 12 times? Think about it: do you tell your spouse “I love you” once in an emotionally disconnected tone? Or do you say it repeatedly with ever-increasing feeling? As you repeat the words, your heart’s capacity for naming and admiring your spouse’s lovely attributes grows with each repetition. The same should be true when we sing something over and over to God. Our hearts expand to make room for more and more reasons why He is deserving of our affection.  

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153) said that human beings may experience four degrees of love. 

First, and least pure of the four, is loving oneself for oneself’s sake. A person with this self-obsessed love is ignorant of the author and sustainer of their being, like a beast that uses nature’s gifts without ever consciously acknowledging the Maker. 

The second degree is love of God for oneself’s sake. This person is better off than the first because at least his eyes are directed upward to the source of life and the sustaining gifts. And yet, it falls short of true love because he is only pursuing God conditionally, for selfish advantage. 

The third degree is the purest form of love that we can offer while we exist in this fallen world. It is the love of God for God’s sake. This person loves God, not for any personal benefit, but entirely for fulfilling God’s will. It is a deep and unconditional love that thinks little of self and simply desires to delight the Father’s heart. 

The fourth and highest degree of love is loving oneself for God’s sake. Clairvaux said that this is the love we will have in the new heavens and earth. In the completed Kingdom, man’s self-love and love of God are aligned such that the whole of their being is lived in praise to God’s glory. 

Let us love God in the highest possible degree this Sunday–not for our sake, but entirely for the delight of our Father. 

“True love is content with itself; it has its reward, the object of its love. Whatever you seem to love because of something else, you do not really love; you really love the end pursued and not that by which it is pursued.” (Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God)