I’m beginning research on a book about love.
The more I pay attention to my own life, the more obvious the gap becomes between the way Jesus loves me and the way I love other people. I notice it in my reactions. In my patience, or lack of it. In the people I instinctively avoid. In the grace I ration (and call boundaries). In the way I can justify being sharp or distant or guarded and still feel like I’m doing okay.
Writing, for me, is a way of refusing to smooth that over. It’s how I slow things down enough to tell the truth about what I see in myself and what I see in Scripture, and then sit there without rushing to resolve the tension between the two.
As I’ve been returning to the New Testament, I’m rediscovering things about love that feel both familiar and unsettling. Things I’ve read a hundred times that suddenly feel aimed directly at me.
Romans 11 and 12 have been some of my favorite chapters in the Bible for decades. In fact, when I rode motocross my number was 121 (Romans 12:1). I’ve read, reread, studied and taught these passages more times than I can count. But revisiting them through the lens of love? Fresh slap across the face.
At the start of Romans 12 Paul talks about how true worship is a surrendered life, and then he shifts into what that worship looks like, and love is at the center! “Love is sincere,” he says. “Love shows genuine affection.” The NLT is even less subtle: “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them.”
Genuine affection. Real love. Not performance.
This is love with proximity. Love that shows up in traffic when granny is cruising in the fast lane. Love in conflict (politics much). Love in community when people are annoying, disappointing, or hard to read. Love that honors others. Love that practices hospitality. Love that resists revenge. Love that somehow keeps choosing good even when evil feels justified.
If you’re like me, you don’t read this and think, “nailed it!” You feel exposed.
Because it means I don’t get to hide behind being polite or professional or vaguely kind. I don’t get to fake warmth while keeping people at arm’s length, not if I’m taking “real affection” seriously. That kind of love requires presence. Attention. Emotional investment. The sort I usually reserve for people I already like.
Paul is asking for more than I planned on giving. There is no way I can generate that kind of love.
John comes in and helps us with that. He reminds us in 1 John that love isn’t just something God does. Love is who God is.
If love is who God is, then love isn’t a side category of faith. It’s not a virtue we add once we get the important things right. It’s closer to a diagnostic.
“If we say we love God but don’t love one another, something is off.”
(Well crap...)
I can be articulate about faith. I can defend positions. I can be right about a lot of things. I can “love God” in all those ways... But when my relationships are marked by distance or judgment or anger or unforgiveness, John reminds me that the two are woven together.
See, Jesus disciples his followers well. He set the tone in his earliest teachings, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
As I have loved you.
His love was a killer... It wasn’t because it “felt right.” Wasn’t what culture rewards. And wasn’t safe.
Foot-washing love. Boundary-crossing love. Love that moves toward people instead of managing them from a distance. Jesus keeps centering love as the thing that makes everything else believable. Without it, even true things start to sound hollow. And the longer I sit with that, the more aware I become of how loud I can be without being loving.
So, what are the core attributes of this kind of love? Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians, not so they could put it on a wedding program, but as a counter to their spiritually egotistical posture towards how God moves in and through his people.
Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not self-seeking. Love is not easily angered. Love rejoices in truth. Love bears, believes, hopes, and endures.
It’s love with teeth. Love you have to carry under pressure. Love that stays present when disengaging would be easier.
I don’t even get past the first line. “Love is patient…” Already I’m out.
I can read that list and immediately think of a dozen moments where I failed. Big ones and small ones. Justified ones and unjustified ones. Places where I was technically right and relationally absent.
In Philippians 2 Paul ties them together. Jesus’ way of love, sacrificial, others centered, to how we are to live, humbled, self-emptying, letting go of status and advantage.
Jesus doesn’t cling to power. He releases it for the sake of others. And that’s how we are to follow Him. It’s not simply descriptive, it’s formative. This isn’t only what Jesus did. It’s what love does. It takes the low place on purpose. It loosens its grip on leverage. It chooses another person’s good over its own comfort or image.
Have you had enough yet (I have)... Can you see the gap in your own heart and life (I do)... Let’s keep going, just a couple more for good measure.
In Colossians 3 Paul lists compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. All of them matter. But love is what binds them together. Without love, those traits can exist independently. With love, they become something shared.
But real love animates everything else.
I can be kind without love. That’s just politeness. I can be patient without love. That’s just restraint.
But love animates everything else. It turns effort into participation. It turns isolated virtues into an actual way of life with others.
Which means I can’t just try harder. I need to be reoriented.
And the piece de resistance....
“Love your enemies.” “Pray for those who persecute you.” (awww.. come on!)
By the way... I checked the Greek and the word for love here (agape) is the same as in all the other, self-sacrificial, patient, kind, not easily angered, life giving, genuine, passages we’ve looked at already...
The funny thing is... I already feel convicted about not loving those I love with this kind of love, let alone, those I can’t stand!
But Jesus says anyone will sacrifice for a brother, a friend, someone familiar. That’s instinct. That’s manageable. (not for me!)
But loving an enemy? A stranger? Someone who threatens your sense of safety or identity or control? That doesn’t feel aspirational. It feels impossible.
How do you love someone who is actively working against you? How do you love without protecting yourself?
Jesus doesn’t really answer that question. He just points back to the Father. “That you may be children of your Father in heaven.”
As if to say, this is what it looks like to be shaped by the love you’ve already received.
What I’m noticing, even this early on, is how relentless the New Testament is about love. It isn’t sprinkled in as a nice idea. It’s everywhere. Every major letter. Every vision of maturity. Every picture of transformation.
And it’s never presented as something I can manage on my own.
It’s Spirit-empowered. It’s humble. It’s costly. It’s relational. It moves toward enemies.
And the gap between that kind of love and the love I actually live—that’s the space I keep finding myself in. That’s the space this book is going to have to sit in too.
And because I suspect I’m not the only one standing in that gap, trying to figure out what it means to love the way Jesus loves—not as a theory, but as a life.
If this content interested you and you want to be part of the conversation as the book develops. I’ll be sharing my notes, thoughts and discoveries here.
If this made you uncomfortable or angry: Good. Me too. Leave a comment or send me a message.
I have long realized that my love is quite feeble and conditional. I recognize that I do not love well, but it is something that I aspire to do. As I read through 1 Corinthins 13, I recognize that this is a description of God and His love. But, when I keep my eyes on Him and allow Him to love through me, then my love begins to look more like His, because it is. It is certainly hard to love those that don't return the affection. Its hard to treat others the way you would like to be treated when the action is not reciprocated. But, we continue to love whether it is received or not. Just like Jesus. Love is not always a feel good emotion. Sometimes telling someone the truth is incredibly loving but seems harsh on the surface. I don't want God to sugar coat the things that I need to rid myself of. I want to know if something is killing me or if something that I am doing is wrong. I don't want to be coddled or lied to in the name of love so that my sensibilities are not offended. Love is certainly messy and it can be hard.
In all of the emotional work that the Lord takes us through, sometimes it is good to place a boundary so that the heart has a chance to heal and to strengthen from the surgery that God has just brought it through. Much like a physical surgery, there are limitations to what you should be doing initially so that you dont undo what the surgical procedure was able to correct. Once wounds are healed then we can step back into the arena and love with a love that may be hard at first but is strengthened as we train and use it. This is definitely an area that requires constant work and training to become proficient at.
Just my thoughts.