Framed in this fashion, to "deny yourself" is not to deprive yourself, but to give yourself to God by giving yourself to others with love. Kierkegaard wrote that, "Love . . . is precisely recognizable by the fact that it finds something lovable in everyone and therefore is able to love everyone . . ." "We love because God first loved us," the Bible teaches. "God so loved us that he gave his only begotten Son." Because God gave everything to us who deserve nothing, he rightly demands that we give our all to him. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind." Do this and you effectively give all that you have to God. Yet Kierkegaard concluded that because God who demands everything from us needs nothing from us, everything you have freed up for God is now freed up for your neighbor! Loving God (who is easy to love) is what makes loving your neighbor (which was hard) possible because now you have so much love to give.
To love your neighbor is to love actual people in your life, not imaginary conceptualizations of how you believe or might wish these people should be. Such love is not childish infatuation, fond indulgence, or doting permissiveness. Instead real love earnestly fights against imperfections and overcomes faults as Christ has done in his love for us. "Christian love is not high, ethereal, heavenly love," Kierkegaard wrote, "but love descended from heaven to earth. It humbles itself, as did Christ, in order to love the people we see just as we see them." May we love like that.
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