On Loving God — Not Unto Us, but Unto Your Name Give Glory

✦ God Himself

Bernard of Clairvaux — a twelfth-century Cistercian monk who spent his life in a monastery in Burgundy — opens his treatise on the love of God with a question so direct that it leaves nowhere to hide: Why should I love God?

And he gives two angles on the same answer. Ask: what is lovely in God? — the answer is God Himself. Ask: what shall I gain by loving God? — the answer is God Himself. The reason to love Him and the reward of loving Him are the same thing. He is both the cause and the prize. Nothing is more reasonable — because God is the most worthy object of love in the universe. Nothing is more profitable — because God is the greatest gain the soul can ever receive.

Bernard does not separate the two. The soul that loves God because He is lovely will find that He is also profitable. The soul that loves God because He is profitable will discover that He is also lovely. The two roads arrive at the same destination: God Himself. 🙏

✦ Loved Us Freely

Bernard names three qualities of the love that came first. God loved us. Not we loved God — He loved us. The initiative was His. Loved us freely. Not in response to something we did. Not as payment for our devotion. Freely — without cause, without condition, without earning. And loved us while yet we were enemies. Not after we repented. Not after we cleaned up. While we were still opposed to Him. While the debt was still unpaid. While the scarlet was still scarlet.

Bernard establishes the sequence that the soul must never forget: His love came first. Our love is always a response. Our devotion is always an answer. The soul that rises before dawn to meet God is not initiating the meeting — she is responding to a love that was already there, already active, already freely given before the first prayer was spoken. 🙏

✦ Greater Love Has No Man

Bernard answers the question how great? by gathering three witnesses — John, Paul, and Christ Himself — and each one says the same thing from a different angle.

John measures the love by the gift: He gave His only-begotten Son. The love is measured by what it cost. And what it cost was everything — the Son, the only one, given for the world that was still His enemy.

Paul measures the love by the sacrifice: He spared not His own Son. The Father held nothing back. The one thing that could not be replaced — the one Son, the only begotten — was delivered up. Not reluctantly. Not with conditions. For us all.

And Christ measures the love by the standard it sets: greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. This is the ceiling. The maximum. The love beyond which no love is possible. And He did it — not for the deserving, but for the enemies who were made friends by the laying down itself. 🙏

✦ Goods Not Our Own

Bernard names three dangers — and ranks them. The first: ranking ourselves too low. The soul that says I am worthless, I have nothing, God cannot use me — that is ignorance. The Prince stooped for a diamond, not a horseshoe. To rank yourself too low is to insult the price He paid.

The second — and Bernard says with still greater care — is thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought. The soul that sees the good in her life and says look what I have done — that is a deeper ignorance. Because the good was never ours. It was given. Every virtue, every growth, every morning devotion that bore fruit — it came from Him.

But the third — far more than either — is the presumption that leads to glorying in goods not our own. Taking credit for gifts. Claiming as personal achievement what is divine generosity. Receiving benefits while robbing the Benefactor of His due glory. Bernard says: this is the ignorance that must be hated and shunned. Not merely avoided. Hated. Because it strikes at the heart of the relationship between the creature and the Creator. 🙏

✦ Treating Gifts as Attributes

Bernard identifies the mechanism of the deepest sin with surgical precision. Pride treats gifts as if they were attributes. An attribute is something that belongs to you by nature — something inherent, essential, yours by right. A gift is something given — received, unearned, belonging to the giver until it is bestowed.

Pride confuses the two. Pride takes the gift of faith and says: I am a faithful person. Takes the gift of devotion and says: I am a devoted person. Takes the gift of the morning before dawn and says: look at my discipline. And in that confusion — in that subtle, almost invisible reclassification of gift as attribute — the Benefactor is robbed of His glory.

The soul that rises before dawn does so because God drew her. The faith that believes the written Word does so because God planted the faith. The devotion that gives itself readily does so because God moved the will from within. Everything is gift. And the moment the gift is treated as a natural attribute — as something the soul produced by herself — the glory that belongs to the Giver is stolen by the receiver. That is pride. The chief of all iniquities. 🙏

✦ All Is Yours

Bernard gives the antidote to pride — and it is a psalm. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Your name give glory. Psalm 115:1. The prayer that returns every gift to its source. The confession that gives back what was never ours to keep.

Not unto us. Said twice — because the soul needs to hear it twice. The first time corrects the instinct. The second time seals the correction. Not unto us. Not our knowledge. Not our distinction. Not our faithfulness. Not our discipline. Not our mornings before dawn. Not unto us.

But unto Your name give glory. The glory belongs where it started — with the One who gave everything. The knowledge came from Him. The virtue came from Him. The wisdom came from Him. The morning devotion came from Him. The love that rises before dawn was planted by Him. And the glory for all of it — returns to Him.

Bernard says: we claim no knowledge, no distinction for ourselves; all is Yours, since from You all things do come. This is the confession of the soul that has escaped pride. Not a soul that has no gifts — but a soul that knows where the gifts came from. And returns the glory to the Giver. From a full heart. Not reluctantly. Not dutifully. From a full heart. Because the heart that knows it has received everything is the heart most full of gratitude — and gratitude is the natural language of love. 🙏