Not long ago, I preached in Kansas City, KS. Memphis, where I live, and Kansas City are both known for their barbecue. So, I couldn’t resist making a few statements prior to preaching about how much better Memphis barbecue is compared to Kansas City barbecue. After the service, the worship leader Nikki shared that she used to hate barbecue: “My parents would take us out to the same barbecue place each week when I was growing up, and I couldn’t stand it.” Then she started dating a guy in college. He took her out to a barbecue place she’d never been to before … and she loved it! “I didn’t realize barbecue could be so good!” she said.
There’s barbecue. And then there’s barbecue. What her parents had passed for barbecue really wasn’t barbecue.
We can say the same thing about love. There’s love. And then there’s love.
This was a point famously made by an abbot in a monastery in the 11th century named Bernard. He ministered in a place known as Clarivaux, and thus he’s called Bernard of Clairvaux. Not surprisingly, he taught that love is the goal of the Christian faith. Countless authors and speakers have echoed this idea. It’s common even today to find Christians and churches saying, “We just need to love.” And while that sounds good on church websites, in Christian books, and from church pulpits, it’s not really as easy as that. Because there’s love. And then there’s love. And what often passes for love among the people of God isn’t really love.
Among the 500 letters of instruction Bernard wrote was his teaching that there are four “degrees” of love. It’s only by moving forward through these degrees that we reach spiritual maturity and find the life we were meant to live. The four degrees of love are:
Love of self for self’s sake.
Love of God for self’s sake.
Love of God for God’s sake.
Love of self for God’s sake.
The first degree of love is this: Love of self for self’s sake. This is where love starts, and, sadly, often stops. Paul addresses this when writing to the Philippians:
“3 In whatever you do, don’t let selfishness or pride be your guide. Be humble, and honor others more than yourselves. 4 Don’t be interested only in your own life, but care about the lives of others too.” (Phil. 2:4-4 ERV)
As we journey, selfishness is too often our guide. We are often only interested in our own lives. Love takes the form of self-interest. And that, Bernard argued, is not really love.
It’s that twisted manifestation of love that leads to twisted ways of treating others. Ibram X. Kendi writes that the root that grew into the racism that we see today is “self-interest” (How to Be an Anti-Racist, 129). It’s our obsession with putting ourselves first that leads inevitably to putting others last. In his 1962 sermon “Levels of Love,” Martin Luther King, Jr. preached that self-centeredness grows into what he called “instrumental love”–a love for others based solely on what they can or cannot do for us. As long as a person can contribute to our happiness, we love them. Once their contribution ceases, so does our love. It’s this self-interest that sometimes even lies behind our call to “love all.” When we say “love all,” we often mean “love all in the ways we want to be loved” rather than taking the time to truly determine what love looks like and feels like for them.
The antidote to this first level of love is found in the example of Christ:
“5 Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.” (Phil. 2:5-7 CSB)
Jesus did not selfishly exploit his status as God, using his power for his own purposes. Rather, he emptied himself. He poured himself out. He gave himself to us for our good.
Growing toward the Christ-way of life starts with naming and confessing this first level of love: love of self for self’s sake.
