When it comes to love, being like God and unlike God are both measures of our closeness to Him.

God’s pure love, his Gift Love born free of all need, is not something we can return to him, for there is nothing more false than to think we don’t need God.  Or as C. S. Lewis put it, nothing is more ludicrous than to say to God, “I’m no beggar.  I love you dispassionately.”  (Fn 1.)  To try to be like God in this respect is to be very far from him for it is the height of pride.  But while we cannot love God like he loves us, we can love one another like he loves us.  And here we begin to see the immense privilege in loving one another, for only then do we experience what is like to love like God.  In that respect, the more like God we are, the closer to God we are.  In this one respect, being unlike God in our love to him, and being like God in our love to one another, are both measures of our nearness to God.  Thus on the one hand we are told, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us,” and again, “We love God because He first loved us,” but on the other hand we are told, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”  (1John 4.10, 19; John 13.34.)  These two loves — one born completely of need and the other devoid of need — are inseparably connected.  The more we have of one, the more we have of the other.  And to the extent we lack one, we lack the other.  (1John 4.20; 5.2.)

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Footnotes

1.  C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, Intro., p. 4.