I recently heard a song that blurred the line between Jesus and a theoretical boyfriend in one of the most blatant ways possible. It was only on the second listen when I realized “Hey, that song has the word “Lord” in it. She’s singing about God! What on earth…….?” I’ll be putting that song up here in a few days as part of the paperthin hymn feature, but needless to say that got me thinking about a topic that I don’t think I’ve talked about much here. It’s not so much the whole “Jesus is my boyfriend” mentality, but rather this idea that we are IN LOVE with Jesus.
There are many exhortations in the Bible that speaks of our love for God. That God loves us. That in response to the love of God we are to love him back and in the process of sanctification our affections for him are to grow and deepen. [1 John 4:19-20] Should we sing songs that talk about the love of God? Yes. Should be understand God as pursuing and wooing us so that he might save us? Yes. It is entirely appropriate and biblical to speak of how much we love God, and that we know, feel and experience his love. That is good, and those are things that we should be walking in and exploring and giving ourselves over to. But there is a chasm of difference between loving Jesus, and being in love with Jesus. The latter is not a biblical category, and nowhere in the bible does it say that we are to be In Love with God or even that such a concept is biblically accurate, much less edifying. That sort of thing is never spoken about. It doesn’t exist.
And yet so much of the language that is used in our modern day Christian Evangelicalism is EROS in nature. It is fueled by romantic love and has subtly infected our culture, music and our theology so that such expressions and ideas are considered commonplace. Its why the western church has by and large accepted lyrics in our corporate worship like “I want to feel you against me Jesus…breathe on me…..hold me in your arms….whisper in my ear….. because I’m so in love with you” This contribution of quasi-erotic lyrics and attitudes towards Jesus has resulted, among other things, in men leaving the church in droves. They find this idea of Jesus as a bearded boyfriend to be intolerable to the point that in their absence the Church has become a place which is essentially run by women whose targeted audience is either other women or boys in skinny jeans.
The point of this post wasn’t to get into a talk about the feminization of the church, but rather that we need to be more precise with our language. We don’t use such imprecise language in our every day life. In your own life, you wouldn’t say “I’m in love with my mother. I’m in love with myself. I’m in love with my job. I’m in love with my friends. I’m in love with my professors. I’m in love with my father in law. I’m in love with my neighbor” . No. You say “I love my mother. I love myself. I love my job. I love my friends. I love my professors. I love my father in law. I love my neighbor.”
And yet people don’t think twice about saying “I’m in love with Jesus. I’m in love God.” or singing songs in worship like “I can’t stop falling in love with you. I’ll never stop falling in love with you.”
Why do you think this is, and what is the result of it?
hey i just stumbled upon this and i think it’s a great article, but did you mean “latter” instead of “former” in your second paragraph? caused me a great deal of confusion at first cos your sentence after than kinda contradicts it otherwise.
First, welcome to the bog. Secondly, Yes, you are right in catching my mistake, thank you very much! I have edited it for clarity.
I understand what you are saying, but I would be cautious about suggesting that any individual’s professed love for God is somehow off-course. The Bible leaves a lot of gaps – by design I think – and part of our great journey is to fill them in as the deeper truths become apparent to us. After all, Jesus identified the first great commandment as the requirement to love God with all one’s might and strength. It strikes me that leaves a lot of headroom for a high degree of intensity in one’s feelings toward God. Just a thought . . .
But people;s love for God can be of course- though I do see the wisdom in taking care that one does not participate in snuffing anothers “fire”, as it were. Still-one can have a high degree of intensity without incorpoating an eros, romantic view of God and his love. To that end, I still don’t think we should speak about God in ways that would have been foreign to the new testament authors, and saying “I’m in love with God” or something similar is one of those things.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. Revelation 19:7
The phrase “in love” makes a lot of christians uncomfortable because the connotation of romance is assumed. However, some people default to that term because of the overpowering intensity they experience – not necessarily because they envision God as a boyfriend. If the love of a person for God exceeds all, which for many in the new and old testament it did, then it follows that no terminology is sufficiently emphatic. Anyway, attempting to set constraints on how others may properly characterize their spirituality seems out of character with the essence of christianity.
Amen, I must agree.
As a Christian who is in love with God and is grateful to be paralyzed because it has brought me so much closer to my God, I would point the reader to theme of divine romance running through the whole of the Bible. Many times God referred to Israel as a lover. The Song of Solomon is widely understood to be a work of poetry symbolizing the relationship God wants us to have with Him. Eph. 5 states that the intimate union of the marital act is a picture of the way Christ loves the Church (us). The Next Life begins with the Wedding Feast of the Bridegroom and the Bride (the Church). We are commanded (it’s not optional) to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The only kind of love that consumes a person like this is true and passionate romantic love between a lover and the beloved. Christ is not a literal boyfriend but the Counterpart to Whom mankind is the perfect complement, taken from His side. True romantic love involves not only commitment, a desire to please, and willingness to sacrifice but also delight, affections, and the need (not merely want) to be close to and one with the beloved. We were created to be a counterpart for the Son of God, a perfect complement. Worship is supposed to be analogous to romantic loving. Even the old vows included, “with my body, I thee worship.” God wants us to love Him much more passionately and completely than we love anyone else, the way one loves when they are in love. There truly is chasm of difference between merely loving God and actually being in love with Him
Wow
I think Erik put it very well and personally I do very happily concur. That said I would like to kindly “Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.” 2 Timothy 2:14. Whether someone loves Jesus or is in love with Jesus, the wonderful news is they are loving Jesus! That is amazingly wonderful. Rejoice in the Lord!
I would like to offer some suggested reading on the topic and that would be Spurgeon’s “Altogether Lovely” sermon no. 1001, http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/1001.htm. May the Lord bless you!
Wow, I never thought of it that way. This is a great article.
I understand this article that people can get confused about loving God and being in love with God, but being in love with God doesnt necessarily mean that a person envisions God as a girlfriend or boyfriend or even romantic. Being in love with God is a good thing and lyrics in songs about wanting God to breathe on them and whatnot is simply a way of loving God’s presence and closeness. I think thats where the confusion stems from at times.