Bernard of Clairvaux: Four Degrees of Love
Bernard challenges us to love God because He is the only one who is worthy to be loved (41). God gave Himself, through Jesus, to us as a redeemer, not because we deserved it, but because He loves us. However, Bernard points out that there are four degrees of love that lead to complete love of God.
The first is “love of self for the sake of self” (42). God wants us to love ourselves, but when taken to excess, love of self becomes lust. Early in my Christian walk, and even today, I struggle with the opposite problem. As a teen and into my 20s and 30s, I really did not like who I was due to the many negative messages I received as a child. I see that this can become a type of lust because the focus is not on God but on self. It is a negative focus, but still not love of God.
The second degree of love is “love of God for self’s sake” (42). A transactional type of love, it stems from what God can do for the individual. After I became a Christian as a teen, this was the state of my spirituality until my mid-30s. My love for God was based on the things He could do and did for me as opposed to loving Him for who He is.
The third degree of love is “love of God for God’s sake” (42-43). Here, we love God because we know that we are loved (43). This is the degree most Christians find themselves. I look back at all the places God showed up – going through cancer, my daughter’s addictions, my heart attack, and I know that God will show up again if I keep asking Him to show up.
The fourth degree, “love of God for self’s sake,” is a degree, according to Bernard, that some Christians experience but don’t stay in (43). But Bernard gives me hope that with the return of Christ and the New Creation, I will be in a constant state of that kind of love.
All references with page numbers are from Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups, Revised and expanded (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005).
The Wandering Wesleyan 