Kierkegaard - Works of Love Conclusion

"Beloved, let us love one another."  ( 1 John 4:7 )   These words are said by one who was perfected in love, recognizing the sadness which broods over life, and is also tempered by the eternal.  

The commandment is that you SHALL love, yet here is so much that would hinder us from loving.  However, when you understand life and yourself, then it is as if you should not need to be commanded, because to love human beings is still the only thing worth living for; without this love you really do not live.   p344

A profession of faith is simply not enough.

See here is the unity of mildness and rigour; that in all things you relate yourself to God is the greatest mildness and the greatest rigour.  Like planets and galaxies floating around in space weightless yet with nearly infinite weight pulling on each other. The mildness of mercy and the rigour of judgement.

The gospel will not save you with rigour but with mildness.   You can not get an external certainty of salvation..

Just as calling someone a hypocrite exposes yourself to the same examination, so too does accusing another person before God  ( and God is always present ).      Be wary of getting over-heated with accusations against the guilty, since to accuse another person before God is to accuse oneself.   

As you have believed it will be given to you.   Seeing the speck in another's eye becomes a speck in one's own eye.  And Christianity is even more rigourous;  this speck, in judgement, is a log.

The main fault of humans being that we forget that God is present.

O.T. like-for-like:  "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"
Activist like-for-like:  "see to it that you do unto others what other do unto you."
Christian like-for-like:  as you do unto others,  God does unto you.  ( forgives,  gives mercy, or doesn't forgive,   etc..   this has nothing to do with what others do to you or say about you.

If you think you have merited something - punishment is all it is.

"Have an unforgettable fear and trembling, even though you rest in God's love.  Such a person will certainly avoid speaking to God about the wrongs of others towards him, about the speck in his brother's eye, for such a person will rather speak to God only about grace, lest this fateful word JUSTICE lose everything for him through what he himself has called forth, the rigorous like-for-like." p 353