The search for human love transcends time, language, and culture. In every generation, men and women, boys and girls, young and old have yearned for true, lasting love. And at the core of that search for human affection, we find a desire to define love itself. In 1984, the British-American rock band Foreigner gave words to that quest with their hit song, “I Want to Know What Love Is”.
Created for Covenant-Keeping Love
When God created humanity in his image, he conferred upon us the capacity to embody every one of his communicable attributes. That means that just as he is holy, he enables us to be holy.
What’s more, his chief command to his children is that we love him and love others. We therefore find love, above all imperatives, at the heart of Christian faith and ethics.
The Old Testament introduces us to a God of love from its opening pages. Genesis 1-2 paints the portrait of a God who fashions our first parents in his image because he loves them and desires to enter into communion with them. Things go south quickly, however. Despite their rebellion, God continues to extend grace to his image bearers. The arc of the storyline of redemption rises. Each successive covenant builds upon the previous and reveals greater depths of divine love. For, despite his people’s sin and unfaithfulness, the LORD remains faithful. He keeps his promises. The Psalms proclaim this truth 34 times in poetic form, “His steadfast love endures forever!” The apex of the revelation of God’s steadfast love, of course, comes to us in the New Covenant.
The Greatest Love of All
The life and ministry of Jesus Christ recounts the greatest love story ever told. In the hours leading up to his chief display of love, our Saviour made this landmark declaration on the nature of friendship and love,
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
Jesus goes on to live out the lesson he taught his disciples that night. Within hours, he undergoes arrest, a mock judicial proceeding in a kangaroo court, a horrific lashing, and a bloody crucifixion. Following his dramatic resurrection, ascension, and the sending of his Spirit at Pentecost, his disciples follow suit. They learn the Master’s ultimate lesson. They, too, lay down their lives out of love.
The Generation X Anthem of Love
Christ’s definition of love stands in contrast to the anthem to love of my generation. In 1986, Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” catapulted her to the top of the charts and gained her worldwide fame. At its core, the song asserted that learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. Some Christians have even defended this claim based on Scripture. “After all,” they argue, “the Bible tells us that we need to love our neighbour as ourselves. That means that we can’t fully love others unless we fully love ourselves.”
The Problem With Self-Love
Let’s choose to believe the best about such an assertion. Self-care is certainly important. We don’t have to equate it with selfishness. A follower of Jesus needs to recharge their batteries by eating healthily, exercising regularly, sleeping well, and spending consistent time in the Word of God and prayer. These personal practices will fuel them to then pour themselves out on behalf of others.
At the same time, the individual devoid of self-acceptance will face difficulty offering affection to others. Yet the antidote to a low view of self is counterintuitive. It involves taking your eyes off of yourself and fixing them on others. Tim Keller explains this principle well in his masterful little booklet The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness:
The Lasting Fruit of Biblical Love
Cultivating self-love, therefore, will not bear the desired fruit of greater happiness and fulfillment. To bear lasting fruit, we need to turn outwards and upwards rather than inwards. Jesus himself declared, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
True greatness, he taught us, comes through service.
So, to discover what true love is, what blessedness is, what greatness is, we need look no further than the cross. With our eyes fixed on our Redeemer, may we seek to embody the kind of love he lived and died and rose and reigns to give.
This article was first published in Spanish at Coalición por el evangelio.
