What I Love When I Love My God
Around middle school, I remember considering words similar to those found in Matthew 10:38-39:
“And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:38-39 ESV).
I was brought up in a quasi-Roman Catholic family where Jesus was someone to fit in our lives when it was convenient. But he certainly didn’t require we orientate our lives around his. He wanted us happy and comfortable to the exclusion of demands.
In the folklore of youth group culture, I remember watching a video of a hockey player. For whatever reason, he decided to follow Jesus. And part of following Jesus for him was giving up the sport he loved. He had divided interests between his loves; would it be sports or Jesus? In his radical commitment, he chose Jesus.
This posed an immediate problem for me. As a budding athlete, nothing could compete with the claim of sports. I was interested in loving God, but what would it cost? Would he ask me to give up soccer as he did with this hockey guy?
I hoped not. In many ways, this fearful reality delayed my decision to follow Jesus. I wanted to add Jesus to my otherwise comfortable life—I didn’t want to forsake my will for his.
CONSIDERING LOSS
Is loss what it means to follow Christ? Does losing your life in such a way mean that I find Christ? Are the loves of this world in competition with love for Christ—even the relationships as close as mother and father, brother and sister? Do my natural loves need forsaking to make room for my Christian ones?
As a young boy, I wanted God on my own terms. As a slightly older man, I can’t say I’ve changed much. I think we all want this—a controllable God who doesn’t ask too much. I wanted my life with a little Jesus sprinkled on top, not a radically different life with different priorities.
I fear many of us come to a comfortable Jesus—a God who demands very little and who re-orientates our lives only slightly, as if we already have most of the resources needed to follow Christ. We simply need a slight re-direction, nothing more. Our sin is bad, sure, but it’s not heinous. It certainly doesn’t require our dying to self. And Jesus dying for them seems a little extreme.
Challenging this narrative, the gospel’s words instead come in direct confrontation with middle-class Christianity. Life in God requires loss—real, significant, and substantial loss. In Jesus’s words, this life of love requires taking up a cross and losing your life.
While this way of life is holy and right, it is not cushy and comfortable. Losing your life, taking up a cross, being humbled by God, and dying to sin are not pleasant images or ideas. The former LBGTQ activist Rosaria Butterfield suggests we should all be able to answer this question: “What have you given up to follow Christ?”
EXPONENTIAL LOVE
The immature notions I held as a middle schooler of what it meant to follow Christ weren’t entirely unfounded. But they also weren’t complete. I viewed the denial of sports as a sort of masochism for Jesus—as if the things I gave up were what made my faith authentic—and I’m sure you have your testimony of the same: burning “secular” CD’s or avoiding certain types of enjoyments.
The life of Christ is not without loss, but its gain is much greater.
As I think about these loves seemingly in competition, the words of Augustine come to mind:
“But what do I love when I love my God? Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love Him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.”[1]
I love what Augustine says here. In essence, in a world where all loves are competing, he says that love for God is exponential. It’s not that we have a certain amount of love that we need to distribute accordingly; rather, in life with God, when we love God, we have more love to give. It’s an ever-expanding resource like a fountain that continually refills itself.
When we love God, we have the capacity to love others things more. It’s only when we love God rightly that we can love the things of this world rightly. We actually love fragrance and taste and embrace when we love it less than God. By loving the greater love of God, we get more out of lesser loves. The love of God fuels our love for creaturely existence.
Life in the love of God is not a deprived life; rather, life in the love of God is a multiplying life, a flourishing, fruitful life where we experience more and more love for more and more of God’s creation.
To be clear, this is not without a disclaimer. This isn’t true across the board. It’s not by loving God more that you love pornography or greed or lying more. These are things that are not to be loved at all. But the righteous love described in Matthew 10:37—love of father and mother—only increases when we love God rightly. When we fail to love God first, we even fail at loving our spouse or children or parents.
As a young man, nobody taught me this part of the deal—that my loves would increase in relation to my love for God. No one explained that when I lose my life I actually gain it more fully. Love for God is not a diminishing resource. Perhaps this is what I needed to hear as a young boy considering the claims of Christ—not a life where all was loss, where the things I held dear were taken away—but a life where all these things were added to me when I finally sought the kingdom of God.
Jesus is not an added element to my otherwise comfortable suburban life but neither is he a slave driver. God is a benevolent father who gives good gifts to his children. He’s a wise gardener who takes away what is harmful so that goodness may flourish.
THE WAY OF LOVE AS THE WAY OF LIFE
What one gives up for Christ is only a lesser love in exchange for a greater one. C.S. Lewis’s well-quoted lines about desire are fitting here. He wrote, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
God is inviting us to desire greater things when he asks for our love. Yes, it will require humility—in its essence, sin is saying, “I know the best way, and I want it.” Or as the missiologist Lesslie Newbigin defined sin: “The heart of man, turned in upon itself, mistaking its center for the center of the universe.” Following Jesus is as simple as saying, “You know the best way, and I want it—even if it hurts.”
It’s in this way, the way of the crucified Savior, that true life is found. The way of the cross is the way of finding your life. The way of loss is the way of love. The one who has suffered the most has loved the most. Christ, in whose baptism we follow, leads the way. God empowers us and invites us into this faithfulness.
May God grant us grace to follow.
[1] St. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine (New York, NY, Penguin, 1961), X.6
Alex Sosler is assistant professor of Bible and Ministry at Montreat College near Asheville, NC. Prior to the academy, Alex served as a pastoral assistant in Cleveland, Ohio, and as an associate pastor in Austin, Texas. He is married to Lauren and dad to Mariela, Auden, and Jude. His church home is Redeemer Anglican Church in Asheville, NC.