Love is not a force. Love is far more than a deep emotional feeling sparked by an arrow from Cupid’s bow. However, you wouldn’t know that by the worship within much of evangelicalism. It’s common for sermons to be filled with romanticized love (eros) which is never used in the New Testament. This way of describing our love for God or God’s love for us has swept through the church in our day. For instance, in John Mark McMillan’s song, “How He Loves” describes God’s love for us by stating:
So we are his portion and he is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking
So heaven meets earth
Like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
And I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about
Jesus is not our boyfriend, and the church is not Jesus’s girlfriend. Words matter. God has determined to communicate to us by the use of language, so how we employ language in response…
