When man encounters the love of God in Christ, not only does he experience what genuine love is, but he is also confronted with the undeniable fact that he, a selfish sinner, does not himself possess true love. He experiences two things at once: the finitude of the creature’s love and its sinful frigidity. To be sure, he does possess something of an “anticipation” [Vorverständnis] of what love is; if he did not, he would not be able to make any sense of the sign of Jesus Christ.