Meister Eckhart’s sermons reflect his training as a theologian and a philosopher. They delve into complex theological ideas, taking considerable care to work through those ideas in a precise, logical fashion. At the same time, however, Eckhart was deeply interested in connecting with his lay audience. He wanted people to understand his message and feel inspired to improve their own spiritual condition. In this sermon, Eckhart reflects on the meaning of 1 John 4:9, a passage whose message he summarizes as “In this God’s love for us has been revealed and has appeared to us, because God has sent his Only-Begotten Son into the world, so that we live with the Son and in the Son and through the Son.” Eckhart’s ideas in this work are difficult at times, requiring close attention from readers and listeners. As you read the sermon, ask yourself what strategies Eckhart used to overcome the challenge of being both rigorous and inspirational.

In hoc apparuit charitas dei in nobis.

“In this God’s love for us has been revealed and has appeared to us, because God has sent his Only-Begotten Son into the world, so that we live with the Son and in the Son and through the Son,” because those who do not live through the Son are not living as they should (1 John 4:9).

Suppose that there were a mighty king who had a fair daughter whom he gave to the son of a poor man. All who were of that man’s family would be ennobled and honored by this. Now one authority says: “God became man, and through that all the human race has been ennobled and honored. We may well all rejoice over this, that Christ our brother has through his own power gone up above all the choirs of angels and sits at the right hand of the Father.” This authority has said well, but really I am not much concerned about this. How would it help me if I had a brother who was a rich man, if I still remained poor? How would it help me if I had a brother who was a wise man, if I still remained a fool?

I shall say something else that has more application to us: God did not only become man—he took human nature upon himself.

The authorities commonly say that all men are equally noble by nature. But truly I say: Everything good that all the saints have possessed, and Mary the mother of God, and Christ in his humanity, all that is my own in this human nature. Now you could ask me: “Since in this nature I have everything that Christ according to his humanity can attain, how is it that we exalt and honor Christ as our Lord and our God?” That is because he became a messenger from God to us and brought us our blessedness. The blessedness that he brought us was ours.

Where the Father gives birth to his Son in the innermost ground, there this nature is suspended. This nature is one and simple. Something may well look forth from it and somehow depend on it, but that is not this, which is one.

I shall say something else that is harder: Whoever is to remain in the nakedness of this nature without any medium must have gone out beyond all persons to such an extent that he is willing to believe as well of a man far beyond the seas, whom he never set eyes on, as he does of the man who lives with him and is his closest friend. For so long as you think better of your own people than you do of the man whom you never saw, you are going quite astray, and you have never had a single glimpse into this simple ground. You may well have seen in some derivative image the truth in a similitude, but that was not the best that could be.

Next, you should have a pure heart, for only that heart is pure which has annihilated everything that is created. Third, you must become naked of what is nothing. People ask, “What is it that burns in hell?” The authorities commonly say that it is self-will. But I say truly that what burns in hell is nothing. Take a comparison. Suppose that someone takes a burning coal and puts it in my hand. If I were to say that it was the coal that was burning my hand, I should be doing the coal an injustice; but if I were to say properly what it is that is burning me, it is nothing, because the coal has something in it that my hand does not have. You must see that it is this nothing that is burning me. But if my hand had everything in it that is in the coal and that the coal can do, my hand would have all the nature of fire. If someone then took all the fire that has ever burned and put it on my hand, that could not hurt me. And in the same way I say: Since God and all those who are in God’s sight have in them, according to their proper blessedness, something that those who are separated from God do not have, that “nothing” alone torments the souls who are in hell, more than self-will or any fire. I say truly: So long as “nothing” holds you bound, so long are you imperfect. Therefore, if you want to be perfect, you must be naked of what is nothing.

That is what the text means with which I began: “God has sent his Only-Begotten Son into the world.” You must not by this understand the external world in which the Son ate and drank with us, but understand it to apply to the inner world. As truly as the Father in his simple nature gives his Son birth naturally, so truly does he give him birth in the most inward part of the spirit, and that is the inner world. Here God’s ground is my ground, and my ground is God’s ground. Here I live from what is my own, as God lives from what is his own. Whoever has looked for an instant into this ground, to such a man a thousand marks of red, minted gold are no more than a counterfeit penny. It is out of this inner ground that you should perform all your works without asking, “Why?” I say truly: So long as you perform your works for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, or for God’s sake, or for the sake of your eternal blessedness, and you work them from without, you are going completely astray. You may well be tolerated, but it is not the best. Because truly, when people think that they are acquiring more of God in inwardness, in devotion, in sweetness and in various approaches than they do by the fireside or in the stable, you are acting just as if you took God and muffled his head up in a cloak and pushed him under a bench. Whoever is seeking God by ways is finding ways and losing God, who in ways is hidden. But whoever seeks for God without ways will find him as he is in himself, and that man will live with the Son, and he is life itself. If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: “Why are you living?” life, if it could answer, would only say: “I live so that I may live.” That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living. If anyone asked a truthful man who works out of his own ground: “Why are you performing your works?” and if he were to give a straight answer, he would only say, “I work so that I may work.”

Where the creature stops, there God begins to be. Now God wants no more from you than that you should in creaturely fashion go out of yourself, and let God be God in you. The smallest creaturely image that ever forms in you is as great as God is great. Why? Because it comes between you and the whole of God. As soon as the image comes in, God and all his divinity have to give way. But as the image goes out, God goes in. God wants you to go out of yourself in creaturely fashion as much as if all his blessedness consisted in it. O my dear man, what harm does it do you to allow God to be God in you? Go completely out of yourself for God’s love, and God comes completely out of himself for love of you. And when these two have gone out, what remains there is a simplified One. In this One the Father brings his Son to birth in the innermost source. Then the Holy Spirit blossoms forth, and then there springs up in God a will that belongs to the soul. So long as the will remains untouched by all created things and by all creation, it is free. Christ says: “No one comes into heaven except him who has come from heaven” (John 3:13). All things are created from nothing; therefore their true origin is nothing, and so far as this noble will inclines toward created things, it flows off with created things toward their nothing.

Now the question is: Does this noble will flow off in such a manner that it can never return? The authorities commonly say that it will never return, so far as it has flowed away in time. But I say: If this will turns away from itself and from all creation for one instant, and back to its first source, then the will stands in its true and free state, and it is free, and in this instant all lost time is restored.

People often say to me: “Pray for me.” Then I think: Why are you coming out? Why do you not stay in yourself and hold on to your own good? After all, you are carrying all truth in you in an essential manner.

That we may so truly remain within, that we may possess all truth, without medium and without distinction, in true blessedness, may God help us to do this. Amen.

Source: Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, trans., Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 181–185.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER