The life-act of the Christian takes part in the strict and proper sense only to the extent that it takes place in the form of love. It is again only in the form of love that it breaks the dominion of the sinister forces to which the man alienated from God, the neighbor and himself is subject. And we must now continue and conclude by saying that it is only in the form of love that it has an absolutely indestructible content and therefore an absolutely certain continuance; that it is participation in the eternal life of God. Only as and to the extent that the Christian loves does he find himself already, in the temporal present of his existence, at the goal set for his and all existence and all the history enacted in time, and therefore in their eternal future. To be more precise, it is only as and to the extent that the Christian loves that the eternal future of his own and all existence becomes and is near even though it is distant, present even though it is future, at the heart of the temporal fulfillment of this existence.
Thus love is the indestructible element in the life-act of the Christian. It is, as we are forced to say, the promise fulfilled already in the present. Love alone abides. Everything else which may and must be done, even by Christians and on the basis of a supreme spiritual endowment, abides only to the extent that is done in love and is thus itself the act of love.
Karl Barth
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