Your Highest Goal: Making Love the Center of the Christian Life
Love is arguably the word most used—and with the widest range of definitions in our culture. From song lyrics to Valentine’s Day celebrations, everyone talks about love, yet defining it proves surprisingly difficult. Ask a room full of people what love means, and you’re likely to get answers “all over the map.”
Yet Scripture makes it clear that love is not a vague or optional idea. The word love appears repeatedly throughout the Gospels—78 times in total, with a striking concentration in John chapters 13–17. These are Jesus’ own words, spoken at the most intimate moment with His disciples. From the very beginning, John tells us that God’s love entered the world through Jesus (John 1:17). When Jesus is asked to identify the greatest commandment, He responds that loving God fully and loving our neighbour as ourselves sums up the entire Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:38–40). Later, He gives His disciples a “new command”: to love one another as He has loved them—declaring that this love will be the defining mark of His followers (John 13:33–34).
Clearly, love sits at the very heart of apprenticeship to Jesus.
The apostles understood this as well. The letters of the New Testament use the word love over 170 times. In addressing the Corinthian church’s understanding of spiritual gifts, Paul makes a striking statement: “Make love your highest goal” (1 Corinthians 14:1). He devotes an entire chapter—1 Corinthians 13—to explaining that love is the foundation for all the work of the Holy Spirit. Without love, even the most impressive spiritual activity amounts to nothing.
Because love is so central to Jesus’ teaching and the life of the Church, this new series sets out to go deeper—not only to understand what love is, but to learn how we can become people who are genuinely characterised by it.
One challenge we face is that most modern definitions of love focus on feelings and emotions—things we cannot control or command. As Dharius Daniels in his book “re-Presenting Jesus “observes, “feelings can be managed but not commanded“. This creates a problem, because Jesus does command us to love, and to love in the way He loves (John 15:17). That means love as Jesus demonstrated must be more than emotion; it must be something visible, intentional, and embodied.
The New Testament most often uses the Greek word agape to describe God’s love. Rather than defining it abstractly, the best way to understand agape is by looking at the life of Jesus Himself. Over the coming weeks, this series will do exactly that—examining how Jesus lives out love, using 1 Corinthians 13:4–6 as a lens through which to observe His actions and character.
To help frame this journey, a working definition of love—drawn from Jesus’ life and the wisdom of Scripture—has been introduced and will remain visible throughout the series, open to refinement as we continue learning together. Agape-To make an absolute priority of, and to work relentlessly for, the absolute best for another person(s) without expecting a return
To launch this exploration, the sermon concludes in an unusual way: with a story. Stories often reveal truth more powerfully than explanations, and few modern writers capture the lived reality of love better than Bob Goff. The opening story from his book Love Does offers a compelling picture of what it looks like when love moves beyond words and becomes action—a fitting invitation into a series devoted to making love our highest goal.
From the Zebra Bag 