What is Christian Love?

The revealed truth of God is certain and stable.

Faith lays hold of truth.

Hope proceeds from faith, and brings the power of fresh joy.

Love thrives in a life that is full of the joy that comes from hope.

Love is more than an emotion. It is lived, and not just felt. Love is sacrificial. Christian love is more than good family bonds of sacrifice and commitment. It is more than the patriotism that we experience in the service of our community and nation.

Christian love is distinctive and new in two particular ways.

1. It is especially expressed within a new family and community of faith, hope, and love: the church. We lay down our lives for one another. We are willing to be low, that some other brother or sister in the body of Christ might be lifted up. It is to be a defining mark of the church that has been touched by the truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then beyond the church, the love of Christ overflows bountifully to the world, even touching those who count us as enemies.

2. Christian love is based on a new divine accomplishment of love that demands our complete surrender. The cross is that new manifestation of the most powerful love.

John 15:12-13 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.”

Love is at the position of highest excellence in the list of faith, hope, and love. Without love, we have nothing, and we are nothing.

Is love really that central to Christianity?

Tomorrow...