What Is Love in the Bible? Loving Like Jesus | Ep 116

What is love in the Bible?In Episode 116, Brian continues Season 6, The Object of Our Formation, by asking a deceptively difficult question: what does it actually mean to love like Jesus?The answer may seem obvious at first. God is love. God is good. Followers of Jesus are called to love God, love others, love ourselves rightly, and participate in the goodness of His Kingdom. But in a fractured and polarized culture, words like “love” and “goodness” are not nearly as simple as they sound. What one person calls loving, another may call harmful. What one person calls good, another may call unjust.This episode explores why we cannot define God by our own assumptions about love and goodness. Instead, we must allow God’s revealed character — in Scripture, creation, and ultimately Jesus — to define love and goodness for us. For the rest of Season 6, Soil & Roots uses this working definition: love is seeking someone’s goodness based on God’s ideas.Brian also applies this definition to the four relationships God placed us in from the beginning: with God, self, others, and creation and culture. Loving God may include honesty, lament, and wrestling. Loving ourselves may require receiving painful goodness. Loving others may include compassion, sacrifice, boundaries, or even distance. Loving creation and culture means stewarding what God has made and participating in His restorative Kingdom.This episode sets the foundation for Season 6: if we are becoming like Jesus, then we must learn what Jesus means by love.Join us online! Web: ⁠⁠http://soilandroots.org⁠⁠ Substack: ⁠ https://soilandroots.substack.com/