Love.
Such a simple word and such a complex thing to understand. Three of my favorite authors & speakers have written whole books on love. Back in the day, the old classical author, CS Lewis, wrote The Four Loves. Then there’s a current one called Love Does by Bob Goff. And finally, there’s Love Wins by Rob Bell. Rob also wrote two other books called Sex God and The ZimZum of Love. Both of them cover sexuality and spirituality and how they’re intertwined.
If you want to check them out, here’s what I’d advise:
- If you’re looking for a major intellectual analysis, go with CS Lewis. (He later wrote A Grief Observed and said that was his more heartfelt book on love, and on grief.)
- If you’re looking for an inspiring and super practical book, read Bob Goff.
- If you’re looking for relationship books that also connect the dots and get you thinking on a deeper level, go with Rob Bell.
But let’s get back to 1 John here for a second. John has written a letter (that only later was divided into 5 short chapters), and in it, he probably describes love more clearly and succinctly than any of the men mentioned above. Here in 1 John, he writes:
This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us.
It’s really simple. Christ, aka the Messiah, aka Jesus, aka the Son of God the Creator… stooped down to our world, subjected himself to our world, lived amongst us in this mess of our world….and sacrificed, offered, gave up… his life, his physical body, blood and all… for us.
That’s wild! And it’s so simple.
That is our supreme model of love. Of the four types of love in the original Greek language, this is the deepest love, the love that Jesus showed us, agape love. Agape love is an action. A verb. In relationship.
And in my best Forrest Gump voice, “That’s all I got to say about that!” 🙂
Omer Redden 