Loving God As The Ultimate Good

 Loving God As The Ultimate Good


Recently, in reading Augustine's City of God, I was struck by his (Augustine's) teaching, that God is to be loved with no reference to anything else.  In other words, God is to be loved for who He is without any appeal to anything else.  Of course, the great church father affirms and insists on the fact that this knowledge and love of the true God is only possible through the mediation of His beloved Son (The Word) of God, Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

When we love anything else in the universe--even properly and lawfully--we, in a sense love that thing/being/person/angel with reference to something else, even higher than the thing/being/person/angel.  We can love a rock, knowing that it could be a jewel; we can love a jewel, knowing that it could be a gift; we could love a gift, because it blesses a receiver; we can love a receiver (human person), because we want their very best.  And this "very best" is a loving relationship with the one, true, holy, and eternal Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

But, when it comes to our love for God, the Holy Trinity, there is no further reference.  He is loved solely for who He is, not for anything "beyond" Him, because there *is* nothing "beyond" Him.

 

One of the glories of this love of the Divine, by us human beings, is that it is ultimate, satisfying, and safe.  There is no higher love that we can attain to; it leaves no sense of incompletion or loss; and it is fulfilling to the loftiest degree possible.  When we love God in and through our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we have reached the pinnacle of all possible loves.

 

This kind of love also soothes our souls, with regard to the imperfections of the objects of all our lower (though still good and legitimate) loves.  No one or no thing in this world could ever satisfy or fulfill us.  For us to stop at the love of that person (or thing), is to guarantee our frustration and misery.  But this is not true with regard to our greatest love (that being of God Himself).

 

The goal of the Christian's churched life is to "stretch" as far as possible to this ultimate love of God.  This is essentially what Paul was referring to, when he wrote what he did, in Philippians 3:14.  The "upward call" of God is that call of love for God in Christ.

 

So long as we settle on lower loves, we will (in practice) be no better off than people in the world, who make no claims to believe in (or love) the true God.  Again, lower loves are fine--so long as they take us up the scale to the supreme love, which is of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

After all, the "Great Commandment" is for us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, (Matt. 22:37-38); and the second greatest, is to love our neighbor as ourselves, (Matt. 22:39).  In this case, the "greatest" serves the "secondary"--but, at the end of the day (and life), *everyone* benefits.  The God-lover is blessed, simply by adhering by faith to the true God.  The "neighbor" is blessed, since we direct him or her to Jesus, the gateway to The Trinity.  And God is honored, because He gets the love He predestined to be His in His creation of the world.

 

Rev. Mark J. Henninger

Treatise #73

2 February 2026

https://theologicaltreatisesinretirement.blogspot.com

https://henningerdevotions.blogspot.com/

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