We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
This is the first week of Advent, the season where we anticipate the coming of Christ. It’s a time to hear and enter into the story of how Jesus came out of love to give his life for us. This grand love story of Christmas taps into a deep intuition we have about the centrality of love. We possess an inexplicable knowledge that if life has any meaning, it must have something to do with love. One could argue that all of our intuitions about morality and the meaning of life are at root an intuition about the supremacy of love.
Of course, many of us today embrace a worldview that makes it difficult to make sense of this profound intuition. Many, for example, believe that only physical matter is real and that there is, therefore, no objective reality to moral convictions and no overarching purpose to life. Still, if we are at all emotionally and psychologically healthy, we will live like morality does objectively exist and as if there is a purpose to life, and this purpose has something to do with love. The dream of love reigning supreme is not easily extinguished.
This enduring dream of love has been expressed in stories told by various cultures throughout time. While most love stories are between humans (for example, Helen of Troy and Paris or Romeo and Juliet), some are between gods (for example, Ariadne and Dionysus) and some even between a god and a human (for example, Aphrodite and Adonis). Today, we don’t see many stories of love involving gods, but we do see extravagant love stories between people. Just consider the incredible popularity of the books and movies by Nicholas Sparks. Or the fact that during the Christmas season, there are some television channels that only run Christmas movies, and so many of them are love stories. The popularity of love stories might have something to do with the ways they connect us with a primordial dream.
It’s the dream of love that lies at the heart of every human being.
If the depth of one’s love can be measured by the sacrifice one is willing to make for the beloved, then the Jesus story must be judged as not only the greatest love story ever told, but also the greatest love story that ever could be told. It is the story of the all-powerful Creator God making the greatest conceivable sacrifice for people who didn’t deserve—or even desire—it. No story could be imagined in which a lover sacrificed more for a beloved who deserved it less.
In this sense, the Jesus story climaxes and fulfills the dream of all the greatest legendary love stories. J. R. R. Tolkien said that the story of Jesus has a “peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving” quality to it that is “mythical” in its perfection. All other love stories are approximations of this one.
Photo credit: Martin Beek via Visualhunt / CC BY-NC
Related Reading
How Much Does the Cross Really Matter?
The cross is as foolishness and weakness to nonbelievers, but Paul wrote that to those who are being saved it is both “the power” and “wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:18, 24). In sharp contrast to the controlling power and wisdom that has been ascribed to God or the gods throughout history—including in much of…
The “Christus Victor” View of the Atonement
God accomplished many things by having his Son become incarnate and die on Calvary. Through Christ God revealed the definitive truth about himself (Rom 5:8, cf. Jn 14:7-10); reconciled all things, including humans, to himself (2 Cor 5:18-19; Col 1:20-22), forgave us our sins (Ac 13:38; Eph 1:7); healed us from our sin-diseased nature (1…
How the Cross Erases Your Sin
In Colossians 2:14, we read how God canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned us. That word “canceled,” means to wipe out, to erase, or to abolish. By means of the cross, God wiped out our indebtedness to the law that stood over us that Satan used to condemn…
The Witness of Graffiti (Rocks Crying Out)
Ibrahim Iujaz via Compfight On this eve of Easter, we wanted to share something that fit the mood of the time between the crucifixion and the resurrection. D.L. Mayfield wrote this striking piece on the longing for the Kingdom of God in the midst of overwhelming brokenness. We thought it was the perfect reflection for…
The Kingdom Stance Toward Enemies
Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane, when a group of temple guards showed up to arrest him. Peter immediately drew his sword and started swinging it, cutting off a guard’s ear. From the world’s point of view, this violence was justified. Peter was simply defending himself and his master. Yet Jesus rebuked him,…
The Goal For Your Life in 2015
Love is the reason anything exists. God created the world out of love—to express his love and to invite others to share in his love. The central goal of creation is succinctly summed up in a profound prayer Jesus prayed just prior to his crucifixion: For [the disciples’] sake I sanctify myself, so that they…