What Love Wants

London, Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, October 21, 1934

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Traditionally the Lutheran Church has required men and women studying to be pastors to learn Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Old and New Testaments. At school, Bonhoeffer had been taught the classical Greek of Plato and Aristotle. As part of his theological training, he also learned Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament. Greek was the common language spoken throughout the Roman Empire in Jesus’ time, when there were many local languages as well, including Aramaic, which Jesus spoke. The apostle Paul, a Jewish Roman citizen, spoke Greek and could communicate with the Corinthians and other Christian communities in Greece in their own tongue.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul uses the word agape, which we translate as “love.” Another Greek word, eros, also means “love,” and both are used in English to help us distinguish erotic and possessive love from the kind of which Paul is speaking here. In English, agape may be a name for a Christian celebration, a “love feast,” but it also has a far deeper meaning. This sermon, the second in a series that Bonhoeffer preached on 1 Corinthians 13, helps to define this unconditional love. Psychology since his time has convinced us that some self-love is healthy, but such love must be as much in the image of agape as of eros—self-forgiving, self-accepting.

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1 Corinthians 13:4–7: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

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Last Sunday we learned that despite all our ideals, our seriousness, our knowledge, and our faith, even our good deeds and sacrifice, our lives are worth nothing if we do not have that one thing that Paul calls love. So it could be that our whole life is meaningless, even if we do our full duty, earnestly and with all our might—because it is done not out of love but out of pride or fear or the vanity of our hearts. And that all our piety is not worth a penny either, if people say of it that it “has not love.” But if all human life and activity amount to nothing without love, we are confronted with the question: What is this love on which everything depends? What is this love, without which all of us are nothing?

It is true that no one lives entirely without love. Every person has love within him or her and knows its power and passion. Each of us knows, furthermore, that it is this love that makes our whole life meaningful; that without this love that we know and have, we could just throw away all our lives—they would no longer be worth living. However, this love, with its power and passion and meaning, which everyone knows, is self-love—our love for our own selves. This is what fulfills us and gives us energy to be active and inventive; it is that without which life would not be worth living. So we do know love, but only in a fiendishly distorted way, as in a mirror—as self-love. But this self-love is love that has gone wrong, that has fallen away from its origin. It is self-satisfied and is therefore condemned never to bear fruit—a love that is really hatred of God and my brother and sister, because they could only disturb me within the tight little circle I have drawn around myself. It has all the same power, the same passion, the same exclusiveness as real love—here or there. What is totally different is its goal—myself, rather than God and my neighbor.

But self-love is also clever. It knows that it is only a distorted likeness of love’s original image. So it pretends, veils itself, and dresses itself up in a thousand different forms, trying to look like real love—and it succeeds so well that human eyes can hardly tell the difference between the real thing and the fake. Self-love disguises itself as love of our neighbor or our country, as public charity, as love of humankind, trying not to be recognized for what it really is. Yet Paul cuts through all of self-love’s attempts to cloud the issue and to deceive and compels it to face its proper responsibility by drawing for it, for us, his picture of what God considers real love.

Each of the characteristics listed here can be interpreted somewhat differently on its own. But taken all together, there is no doubt that they break the spell of self-love and let the love of God and one’s neighbor become a reality. But where is this taking place? It doesn’t say a loving person does this or that, but rather says love does this or that. Who is this love? Whom are we talking about? How do we know it?

Before we answer that, let us listen to what is being said. “Love is patient and kind. . . .” That means love can wait a long, long time, till the very end. It doesn’t become impatient, doesn’t try to hurry things or force them to happen. It expects to wait a good long time. It is confident only of being able finally, finally to overcome the other’s resistance. Being patient and waiting, continuing to be kind and loving, even if it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose, is the only way to overcome a human being. That is the only way to loosen the chains that bind every person, the chains of fear of the other, of the fear of a radical change, of a new life. Friendliness often seems totally inappropriate, but love is patient and kind—it waits, the way one waits for someone who has lost the way, waits and rejoices whenever he or she finally gets there.

For that reason love is not jealous—but self-love is jealous. It wants something for itself, it wants to win over and possess the other person for itself, it wants something from that person. But love doesn’t want anything from the other person—what it wants is everything for that person. It doesn’t want to possess the other person, especially not to have him or her jealously all to itself. It only wants to love the other person, because it cannot do otherwise; it only wants the person for his or her own sake. It wants nothing from other people but desires everything for them. Jealousy, which supposedly enhances and safeguards love, actually destroys love, soils and desecrates it.

Because love is not jealous, because it seeks nothing for itself, it therefore doesn’t try to make anything of itself—it would rather be wholly inconspicuous or not really be seen at all. It does not call attention to itself, or put on airs, or try to be anything special—it is not boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. We do everything to point out what is special about our love; we play the roles of the saint, the innocent, the fool, or even the martyr with our love. We try to make the other afraid that we might suddenly withdraw our love; that is, we play games with our love, we use it to treat others any way we like. We are ready and able to break the rules of decency and custom, modesty and reserve, in order to get attention for our love. But love is not rude—it does not do all those things that we do in the guise of love. It does not do them, because it does not insist on its own way. It wants nothing for itself, really and truly—it forgets itself and does not see itself, any more than our eyes can see themselves.

What love might want, if it tried to get its own way—at least what in any case we are looking for when we love someone—is at least to be loved back, or some degree of gratitude for our love. But even what we might think belongs to love, what it deserves, it does not insist on having for itself. For it is just when it does not so insist—not even surreptitiously and secretly—that perhaps it will find what it seeks. Love is happy and grateful when others find what they are looking for; and it looks on without envy when the other person loves someone else, the way a good mother rejoices when her child finds someone to love with his or her whole heart, even when the mother herself has to stand back.

Even when the other person turns out to be sinful and spiteful, love does not become bitter, because it is not looking to receive kindness. It is thinking not of itself at all but only of the other. It grieves over the other’s nastiness, is saddened by it, and loves him or her all the more, but does not become bitter. When our whole life seems bitter because we are not loved in return, love says to us: you haven’t yet really loved someone if you let his or her hate or inattentiveness destroy your love; otherwise you would be free of bitterness. You allow yourself to become bitter, but love never does. It doesn’t let the bad things count. Wherever we think that justice demands that we keep count of good and bad and determine it—there, love is blind, knowingly blind; it sees the bad, but doesn’t count it, rather forgives—and only love can forgive. It forgets, instead of bearing grudges. If we could only understand that one thing: love does not bear grudges. It meets the other person each day anew, with new love. It forgets what went on yesterday—it is even willing for others to be scornful and think it is being foolish. It never loses faith but simply goes on loving.

So don’t right and wrong make any difference to love? No, love does not rejoice at injustice, but it does rejoice in the truth. It wants to see things as they are. It would rather see clearly the hate and injustice and lies that are there than all sorts of charming masks that only serve to cover up the hate and make it even uglier. Love wants to create and to see clear relationships. It rejoices in the truth—for only truth enables love to love again, anew.

Now comes the great summing-up, which we hardly dare to expound, because it is so immensely deep and vast and serious. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The focus here is on all things—there is no compromising here; it really means anything. Perhaps once, in a great moment of our lives, we might say to someone, I’d do anything for you, I’d give up anything for you, I’d bear anything, together with you. But even as we say it, we are silently setting the one great condition: As long as you will do the same for me. For love, no such condition exists. Love’s “anything” is not subject to any circumstances—it is, unconditionally, all things.

Love bears all things—that means it cannot be frightened by any evil. It can look upon and take in all the horror of human sin. It doesn’t look away from what is unbearable; it can stand the sight of blood. Love can stand anything. No guilt, no crime, no vice, no disaster is so heavy that love cannot look at it and take it upon itself, for it knows: love is still greater than the greatest guilt.

Love believes all things—and because of that it can be fooled but is still in the right. Because of that, one can betray love and lie to it, but still it stands. But who would be foolish enough to believe everything? Isn’t that just asking others to take me for a fool? Yes, it would be foolish if I had in mind getting anything for myself with my love. But if I really and truly do not want anything out of it for myself, just to love unconditionally, boundlessly, without prejudice—then it is not foolish at all. Then it is the way to overcome other persons, the way to make them begin to wonder, until they turn around and come back. Love believes all things, because it cannot do otherwise than believe that in the end the very final word will be that everyone, yes, everyone, is called to be overcome by love.

Has it ever happened to you that you were talking with someone who was considered really bad, someone who nobody expected ever to do anything right or honest, but you listened to him or her and believed in what he or she was saying? And then the person simply broke down, just from being believed, and said to you, “You are the first one who has believed me in a long time.” And that then that person really took heart from your belief in him or her—even if he or she had just been lying to us. On the other hand, can you remember the despair of someone whom we didn’t trust, but who we found out later had been telling us the truth, and who, because of our mistrust, had come to doubt his or her entire faith? After these experiences, one understands why love does not make any distinctions, but with open eyes believes all things—or with blind eyes, sees the true future.

Love hopes all things. It never gives up on anyone, knowing the day will come when the lost one will turn back, will have to return to the love he or she has denied, broken up, shaken off, forgotten, when the sickness finally yields and the person stands erect, healed. Love is like the doctor at the bedside who “doesn’t give up hope” for the patient, and this hope makes the patient take heart. And because love has no other desire than that the patient take heart, it will never give up on him or her but will keep hoping all things—not just for individual persons, but for a whole people and for a church. If one has not love, then to hope for all things is crazy recklessness and over-optimism. But to hope for all things out of love is the power that a people and a church need in order to stand upright again. This is what we are called to do—to hope so unconditionally that our loving hope can empower others.

Anyone who believes and hopes all things for the sake of love, for the sake of helping people stand tall again, must be patient and suffer. The world will take him or her for a fool, and perhaps a dangerous fool, because this foolishness challenges the malicious forces and brings them out. Yet the malicious can only be fully loved when they come out into the light. Therefore: love endures all things—and is blessed in its endurance, for this endurance makes it grow ever greater and ever more irresistible. Love that only has to endure a little will stay weak. Love that endures all things will gain the victory.

Who is this love—if it is not he who bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things—and indeed, had to endure all things, all the way to the cross? Who was never looking for his own gain, never became bitter, and never kept count of the evil done to him—and thus was overpowered by evil? Who even prayed for his enemies on the cross [Luke 23:34] and thereby totally overcame evil? Who is this love, which Paul was talking about, other than Jesus Christ himself? Who else could it be, if not he? What better symbol could there be, standing over this entire passage, than the cross?