Human Works of
Agape-Love
The original intent of God was to be
intimate neighbors of humanity in being co-workers of agape-love by way of dwelling in and through His divine nature of agape. Moses is an exemplar of this
original intention, as “God spoke to Moses face to face, the way a person
speaks to a friend (same word for neighbor),” and also consider Christ’s
relationship with His disciples whom He called His friends, as well as the
relationship between Christians. (Ex. 33:11; John 15:15)[i]. If one truly abide in agape, then it must be given, and it is meant to be given to all
creatures created to be neighbors in agape-love,
as the spiritual breath of life meant for all earth-dwellers.[ii]
True agape is not at all about comparison, but is only about incessant action.
It flows by a continual inward direction that derives love from one’s innermost
being where one, in the Spirit, relates intimately with God. He is the only source
of agape. Agape-love also flows by an outward direction by which one becomes
a temple of agape as the living-water
of soul incessantly flowing as a fountain sourced by an eternal spring. There is
no time for comparison or else one stops abiding in this eternal spring, which
is continuously ready to give (187-188, 280). Hence, Kierkegaard concludes that
regarding human beings in relation to agape-love,
“love for God and the neighbor is the true [agape-] love,” and this summarizes
the entire standard of human oughtness as creatures made to reflect God’s
likeness (45; Luke 10:25-28).
Kierkegaard points out that in regards
to individual human persons, designating a work as a work of agape-love
“depends on how the work is done,” and so like the external manifestations of
the thought life, they happen to be based on matters of inwardness and not
externalities, which thinks loving persons is merely about benefitting their
situation in this world (8, 13, 327-329). So, for us our life that manifests agape-love like a real neighbor of agape
comes from our innermost being where our likeness to God is found, in our soul
and spirit. As we shall see later, we can only be loving as God is loving by
inwardly and intimately relating ourselves to God in a communal
God-relationship, so that we love by and through this abiding in He who is agape (8-10, 189). Since “no human
being is [agape-]love”, humanity’s agape is not completely self-giving as God’s
love (264). God’s self-giving is a love that is “giving of oneself” where
oneself is the God who is love,
whereas man’s self-giving is “helping the other person to seek God,” in this
sense one is giving of oneself by getting out of the way to introduce one to
God, even as God is being revealed in and through this person (264-265). In
this way a person in self-denial becomes one who sacrificially gives of
himself, by doing what the Scriptures calls us to do in laying down our lives
for one another, that the other might abide in God’s love. In this way, a loving
person acknowledges that God’s love should belong to the other, and so they freely promote the reception of this highest
gift, which presupposes that God’s love can be given to them (264-265, 268-269;
1 John 3:16; John 15:12).
Agape-love becomes sacrificial love,
because it can and often will be taken advantage of in the world without due
recompense. What Kierkegaard speaks of truly takes place: “to give everything
away without getting the least in return… [to become a] laughingstock in the
eyes of the world… the unconditionally injured one…. being sacrificed”, and
Christ Himself informed us it would be this way for us, if we followed in the
shoes of the one who was crucified by the very one’s He came to save (269; Luke
6:27-36; Matt. 5:38-48). Such sacrificial love can only be given if it is
indeed sacrificial in the sense of one freely, delightfully, and willingly
laying down one’s life in giving oneself away. This requires a heart that has
become pure, and is pure by being a heart that reflects the heart of God by
being bound in His, by beating for what His heart beats for, as a circumcised
heart (147-150; Rm. 2:29, 5:5; Deut. 30:6-8; Ezek. 36:26). Because of this
sacrificial nature, the manifestation of true agape-love is seen according to the world’s hedonistic self-love to
be a wasting of one’s self, and often this love is seen as vain and
inconsequential; however, this selfish person is as Kierkegaard says,
“unwilling to waste any time or energy on asserting himself, on being something
for himself in his self-sacrifice is willing to perish… [rejecting to] simply
be an active power in the hands of God” (279). Such a person who does not
reject this “forgets his suffering,” because they care more about another’s
loss, and forgets so-called advantage to promote another’s true advantage, and
so he is truly devoted to the other in being delighted to give of themselves so
the other can become an ontological neighbor of agape-love (281).
The loving individual does not seek to
discriminatorily choose a beloved based on preferences, “earthly
dissimilarity”, partiality. They accept that they freely exist to promote
unconditionally everyone in being ontological neighbors of agape alongside
them, even one’s enemy, (19, 44, 72, 240-243). This makes clear that it does
not demand reciprocal love, such that a deceiver would fail to get the upper
hand of him in “tricking” him into being loving. Since even the enemy is loved,
then this means that one has a “closed eye of forbearance and leniency that
does not see defects and imperfections,” and these are not heeded as far as
determining whether or not to love another, for all that matters is that one is
an “other,” one’s “neighbor,” one who dwells-alongside (21, 161-162, 167). This
calls one to love another for who they are, not who they could or should be,
but to love them simply because they are an “other,” one’s “neighbor” (164-165,
252-253). So this gaze that searches for one to love is not one that is
critically fault-finding prone to rejecting but rather is hopeful enough to
“hope all things” as prone to accept all, for God’s love is for all (164-165,
252-253, 258-259). This is because there is no dissimilarity on the level of a
being created to be an ontological neighbor of agape-love, since the mercy and
grace of God can redeem even seemingly most hateful and hopeless (166). This
love that goes out to one’s enemy, makes it clear that agape-love “fights… to remove the heterogeneity” of human loves
that do not include unconditionally everyone as a neighbor to be loved, simply
by being an “other” who dwells alongside us (67-68).
Love also seeks to love individuals
according to distinctiveness as individuals distinctively created in God’s
image, as single individuals who possess the qualification of spirit, as an
offspring of God who subsists in God (138, 269-270; Acts 17:28). Every self is
an ‘other’ who was originally created to be an ontological-neighbor of
agape-love, and so to love another as neighbor shows that one loves equally all
individual persons, as those whose rightful property is agape-love, such that it should be given if one has it to give (21,
431). Love is a need for this individual to pour himself out for an ‘other’ in
promoting the other’s highest good, which is to abide in He who alone is agape-love (67). The Scripture says
that the one who lives by the Spirit will love one’s neighbor by behaving like
the Spirit. So Kierkegaard is right in saying that love for the neighbor is the
agape-love that is the “Spirit’s love,” which is “defined as spirit purely
spiritually,” as it is “love between two beings eternally and independently
determined as spirit” (56-57, 143; Gal. 5:15-18, 22-25; Rm. 5:5, 13:10,
15:1-2). Hence, Scripture calls the love of neighbor the “royal law” that
necessarily involves no prejudice just as God is not partial, for it is an
acknowledgement that all are made in God’s image and were created to be a
neighbor of agape-love, even if they
are not presently but only an ontological neighbor in being a fellow individual
self (James 2:1-9; Rom. 2:11).
This love for neighbor bears the inner
sanctifying element that wants to set apart every relation to another to be set
apart to agape-love that seeks to
permeate all entities made in God’s image with God-likeness, and this begins
with being promoted to knowing and abiding in agape (145). Agape-love among created
neighbors of the Creator’s immanent Spirit, who seeks to give new birth to them
as children in the Spirit set apart to bring agape to completion in creation, is a duty. The ontological
dwelling of their creaturely existence was meant to be guided by the care of agape that every action promoted the
completion of agape; for in giving oneself freely does one find oneself and
live, which is everyone’s intended destiny (22, 61-62; Luke 9:23-25). This agape-love forces one to see the other
as God does, as one intended to be a neighbor in agape-love, for all made in
God’s image are only free of despair when this self-actualization as a truly
Loving One according to agape-love
happens through the inner path of self-denial. True agape finds “something lovable in all of us,” for the signature of
divine-likeness although faded can be made to shine again by mercy and grace,
which are grounded on a state of them being undeserving (158-159) As a result,
the fact that one appears to be undeserving of love means that they will be
loved by agape (158-159). Even when
we were sinners who seemed unlovable, Christ in spite of this found something
worth loving to lay down His life for us (Rom 5:5-8). In spite of
gone-wrongness, agape finds the lost to bring them back, which is the same love
for the lost that was given to us by the Spirit, who frees us to love as Christ
loves with such unconditional love that reflects the glory of the Self-Emptying
One (Rm. 5:5-8; 2 Cor. 3:17-18).
Love like this is not based on what one
has or has not become. It is not based on dissimilarities between individuals
based on choice, or the selfhood one has come into. It is solely based on one
being a self, period, one existing as a neighbor, as one who one can be a
recipient of compassion, care, and sympathy. Apart from God, a finite self
cannot abide in agape. Moreover, God knows how the suffering of this world can
surely pollute the self according to the ways of anti-agape, hatred and fear. Nonetheless like a car that no longer has
an engine and is dirty but can be cleaned and receive an engine, every human
being who walks this world has potential for being restored by agape. Every
individual is like the man who was beaten in the parable of the good Samaritan
is in need of love. Just as we are not given the worthiness of this man to be
cared for, so Christ is saying that every individual in that situation is one’s
neighbor. To recognize this one must acknowledge that they are their “co-worker,”
their “fellow in existing by God’s Spirit,” and as such undeserved mercy is
due. None truly deserve agape or to be a neighbor of the Loving One in the first
place (Luke 10:29-37). Therefore, it becomes clear why Christ would call us to
love our enemy to the end of doing good to those who hate us and to give to
those who take from us. In doing so, a person becomes like God, the Loving-One.
Humanity naturally only loves humanly by
loving only those who show reciprocal love and those who do promote the good of
oneself. Loving one’s enemies is a divine like love, whereby one becomes a “son
of the Most high,” given that Yahweh is gracious and merciful to evil
self-lovers (Matt. 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-36). The shocking non-human aspect of
this agape-love calls us to be
perfect as God is perfect. What is striking is that this echoes Leviticus 19:2.
Here we are called be holy as Yahweh is holy, and the way the entire chapter
describes what this being holy like God looks like is exactly love for one’s
neighbor (Matt. 5:48; Lev. 19, 19:2, 18). This means that God treats
individuals like His ontological neighbors, for we read how “He is kind to ungrateful
and evil people” and “He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and
sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” a (Matt. 5:43-45; Luke 6:35). Hence,
such love of stranger and enemy, as our neighbor, is said to mirror to this
love of God for all humanity, even those humans estimate to be the most evil
and un-loveable, yet He sees as enslaved to anti-agape.
[i]
This means being partners and with-havers with the Holy Spirit, especially
Enoch who intimately walked with God, and the communion/ association/
fellowship believers have with the Spirit, Son, and the Father (Gen. 5:24; 1
John 1:3; 2 Cor. 13:14; Hebrews 6:4).
[ii] Love
of neighbor is focused on not pleasing oneself but rather like Christ laying
down our life for one another, for this brings glory to God (Rm. 15:1-2). Every
relationship is asked will one love the other as God has loved the other, and
hence, every relationship between persons becomes a matter of conscience (135,
142).
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