Loving The Way Jesus Loves
Phil Ryken
IVP
ISBN:978-84474-565-4
224 pages, £8.99
Star rating: 5 Stars
Do not read this book unless you are prepared to be searched and challenged! This is a remarkable exposition of 1 Corinthians 13 that every Christian ought to buy and read but do not read it if you do not want to face some serious heart searching. Phil Ryken takes us through 1 Corinthians 13 but he does so in a telling way using different events in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and his teaching. He says ‘What makes these verses so beautiful is that they are really a portrait of Jesus and his love-everything these verses say about love is characteristic of Jesus’ He rightly maintains that studying 1 Corinthians 13 in a Christ centered way helps us to learn to love the way Jesus loves. ‘When Paul wrote about love in this chapter he was not trying to give people something nice to read at weddings’
There are many arresting and unnerving things in this book for example on v3 giving away all I have etc ‘No one cares how much we know unless they also know how much we care. What matters most is not how gifted we are but how loving we are’ He suggests a prayer ‘Jesus in your perfect love I pray that you would forgive my hateful sins and teach my loveless heart to love the way that you love’ When Paul says ‘Love is kind’ Ryken says ‘Love begins not with loving but with being loved…we can only give what we have received’ I found the chapter on ‘Love is not irritable’ very challenging. The author says ‘Love is not grumpy or grouchy’, ‘Love does not launch into verbal abuse or give people the silent treatment’
The author brings to us numerous lessons and quotes from others which I found valuable and I appreciated the references to men and women who portrayed Christ’s love in striking ways, Corie Ten Boom and her sister in the Nazi concentration camp, Lady Jane Grey before her execution and many others that made God’s love in Christ so powerfully compelling.
Peter Culver,
Bath.
