Love and obedience

“This is the love of God: that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:3)

But what is the connection between love and commands? Indeed, why would a loving God issue us commands?

Many things can be said about this. But here is one more that has occurred to me. God is unchanging and has complete beatitude. Yet love seems to fit particularly well with vulnerability. And by commanding one becomes vulnerable to the person one has commanded. For it detracts from one’s “extrinsic wellbeing” if one’s commands are broken.

Thus while one might think of the issuance of commands as the mark of dignity and greatness, and it is that, it also turns the tables, by making the commander be at the mercy of the commanded, at least with respect to the fulfillment of this particular aspect of the commander’s will.

Aristotle thought that love between gods and humans was impossible because of the inequality, since love involves a kind of equality. Kierkegaard wrote much about the difficulty of a love relationship between the infinite and the finite. But commanding us, paradoxically, is a way of introducing a kind of equality.

Of course, our disobedience does not change God, or impact his intrinsic beatitude. But it does impact his external wellbeing, and detracts his extrinsic honor.

And this is a different kind of vulnerability from that which the second person of the Trinity acquires by the Incarnation. It is a vulnerability of God as God.