If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?—I JOHN 4:20
HOW deeply is the need for love grounded in man’s being! The first thing, if we may speak in this way, which was said about man, and said by the only One who in truth could say it, by God Himself, and about the first man, says just this. We read in the Holy Scriptures: “God said, it is not good for man to be alone.” So woman was taken from the side of man and given to him for a companion—for love and companionship first take something from a man before they give. Therefore throughout all ages everyone who has thought more deeply about the nature of man, has therefore recognized in him this need for companionship. How often it has been said, and repeated again and again; how often has one cried woe upon the loneliness, or pictured the pain of loneliness and its wretchedness; how often has one, wearied by the vitiating, noisy, confused associations of everyday life, wandered out to the solitary place—only to learn again to hunger for companionship! For thus one always returns to that thought of God’s, that first thought about man.
In the busy, teeming multitude, which as company is both too much and too little, man becomes tired of company; but the cure does not consist in discovering that God’s thought was wrong, not at all; but the healing consists in learning from the very first to understand one’s self in the yearning for companionship. So deeply is this need entrenched in human nature that it has remained unchanged since the creation of the first man; no new discovery has been made, but that first observation, one and the same, has been confirmed in many ways, varying from generation to generation in the form of expression, or in the way in which it was presented, or in the turn of the thought.
So deeply is this need grounded in man’s nature, and so essentially does it belong to the fact of his being human, that even He who was One with the Father, and in community of love was One with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He who loved the whole race, our Lord Jesus Christ, still humanly felt this need to love and be loved by an individual man. He was indeed the God-Man, and so eternally different from every other man, but He was, nevertheless, also true man, tried in everything human. And, on the other side, the fact that He experienced all this, is exactly the expression for the fact that He was essentially human. He was an actual man, and can therefore have sympathy with all things human; He was not an airy form which beckoned in the clouds, without understanding or wishing to understand what humanly befalls a man. Oh, no, He could have pity on the multitude who needed food, and that in the purely human sense, He who had Himself hungered in the wilderness.
And so too He could sympathize with men in their need to love and to be loved, sympathize in a purely human way. We find this pictured in the Gospel of John. Jesus says to Simon Peter: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?” Peter answers Him: “Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.” How touching this is! Christ asks: “Lovest thou me more than these?’ It is almost like a prayer for love. Thus speaks the One to whom it is all important to be the best-loved. Peter himself is conscious of this inconsonance, like that when Jesus would be baptized by John. Therefore Peter not only answers, “Yes,” but he adds, “Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.” This reply indicates the inconsonance. For ordinarily if a man knows that he is loved, because he has heard it asserted before, then he is more than willing to hear it again, and therefore wishes to hear it again, although he knows it in many other ways than by this mere assertion, to which he once more returns, anxious to hear it again. Of course it is in another sense that Christ can be said to know that Peter loves Him. Still, Christ again a second time says to him: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” Peter answers Him: “Aye, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.” What else is there to answer, while the inconsonance only becomes clearer because the question is asked a second time! Christ says to him the third time: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” Peter was grieved because He said a third time to him, “Lovest thou me?” and Peter said to Him: “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.” Peter does not carry his answer further; instead, in his reply he refers to what Christ must know from experience about Peter’s feeling—“Thou knowest that I love Thee,” he answers, “Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.” Hence Peter says no more, he almost shudders at the inconsonance; for a “yes” is like a real answer to a real question, whereby the questioner learns to know something or learns it more definitely than he knew it before. But One who “knows all things,” how can He get to know something, or through another’s assurance get to know it more certainly than He knew it before? And yet, if He cannot do this, then neither can He love quite humanly, for this is just the mystery of love, that there is no higher certainty than the beloved’s renewed assurance; humanly understood it is uriconditionally to be certain of being loved, not of loving, since it is superior to the relation between friend and friend. Terrible contradiction: that the One who is God, loves humanly; for to love humanly is indeed to love an individual man and to wish to be the one best loved by this particular man. That is why Peter was grieved at the question being asked a third time! For in a similar relation of love between men, there is a new joy in the question being asked three times, and a new joy in answering three times; or else the question repeated too often grieves, because it seems to betray mistrust. But when He who knows all things asks three times, hence finds it necessary to ask three times, then must it not be because, since He knows everything, He knows that the love is not strong enough, not inward enough, not ardent enough, in the one who is questioned, the one who would also deny Him three times? Peter must certainly have thought that this was the reason the Lord found it necessary to ask the question three times—for it truly could not be because the Lord Himself felt the need to hear this “yes” three times; such a thought would be beyond man’s power to imagine. Even if the thought is allowed, it is simply out of the question. Oh, but how human! He who answered not a word to the high priests who condemned Him to death, He who answered not a word to Pilate who held His life in his hands —He asks three times if He is loved; moreover, He asks if Peter loves Him—“more than these’!