The Rule of Love: How the Local Church Should Reflect God's Love and Authority
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
God Is Love vs. Love Is God
Our culture’s view of love—with no boundaries or judgments or conditions— justifies whatever our hearts want and whatever our hearts feel, rejecting any authority that gets in the way. Falsely heralded as the only path to true selfexpression and self-realization, this kind of love diminishes—if not completely redefines—the holy love of God revealed in the Bible.
In this book, Jonathan Leeman directs us toward a biblical definition of love by answering critical questions: How is love commonly misunderstood? What is God’s love like and why is it offensive? And how does all of this relate to the church? In an age of consumerism, individualism, and tribalism, Leeman demonstrates how God showcases his holy love and authority to a watching world through the lives of his people living in true community with one another as the church.
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- Directs us toward a biblical definition of love
- Demonstrates how a God-centered approach to love is far more satisfying than our culture’s fluid, anemic, me-centered approach
- Helps readers to recapture the beauty and glory of how the local churches ought to reflect God’s love and authority before a watching world
- Introduction: When Love Is God
- Love in the Culture
- Love among the Theologians
- God’s Love for God—Part 1
- God’s Love for God—Part 2
- God’s Love for Sinners
- Love and Judgment
- Love and Authority
Top Highlights
“An outgrowth of individualism and consumerism is a fear of making binding commitments.” (source)
“So now we carry around something called love which possesses all the moral authority of God himself. The trouble is, it’s not God. It’s nothing more or less than our own desires—especially the desire to rule ourselves.” (source)
“Assumption 1. No moral boundaries or judgments can be placed on love. Rather, love establishes all the boundaries.” (source)
“We are less interested in the God who is love than in making our views of love god.” (source)
“We’re no longer interested in the God who is love. Rather, we’re interested in our own ideas of love, which become god. ‘God is love’ is traded in for ‘Love is god.’ Instead of going before the Creator of the universe and saying, ‘Tell us what you are like and how you define love,’ we start with our own views of love and deify them.” (source)
Love is one of the most popular themes and most commonly invoked ideals in the world. It is also one of the most misunderstood. The Rule of Love is a brave and bracing critique of the picture of a watered-down, self-centered, and all-inclusive (i.e., unholy) love that prevails in contemporary culture—and in too many churches. It is also a recovery of a God-centered picture of love in which God’s love for the world is tied to God’s holy love for his own glory. Only the latter makes sense of the gospel, and of church discipline. Any book that explains how God’s authority and judgment are not the opposites of God’s love, but rather its display, is radical—in the dual sense of recovering the root and offering prophetic critique—and this book is deserving of a serious hearing and a radical reception.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
I don’t know many people who have thought as long, as hard, and as well about the church as Jonathan Leeman. He helps us to reconstruct our idea of the local church, not by rearranging the walls, but by refitting the two floorboards that undergird the church—love and authority. It seems our culture has been drawn to the former and rejected the latter because it has understood neither. In a world that is quick to react, Leeman challenges us to step back and reconsider love, authority, and the way they were designed to relate to each other. He opens our eyes to our hidden assumptions and fears about love and authority. With theological precision and pastoral sensitivity, he does much more than highlight our problems and fears—he also shows us a grand vision for the gospel working in the world through a church that rightly understands love, authority, and their inseparable connection. This is an excellent work for pastors, church members, and even people on the outside trying to make sense of what Christians believe. I am grateful that Jonathan has condensed his years of study about the church and pastoring in the church into a such a potent book, and I’m excited for others to get their hands on this.
John Onwuchekwa, Pastor, Cornerstone Church, Atlanta, Georgia; author, Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church
While multiple words can be used to describe the many strengths of Jonathan Leeman’s new book, the word that most comes to mind is timely. On the one hand, he clearly and cogently articulates how our culture has undermined the nature of God’s love, especially in relation to the ideas of authority and judgment. On the other hand, he persuasively and passionately presents how the church of Jesus Christ, armed with a biblical view of God’s love, can present to a needy world the goodness and beauty of God in multiple ways. Every church, with its pastors and people, needs to read this timely book.
Julius J. Kim, President, The Gospel Coalition; Professor of Practical Theology, Westminster Seminary California
- Title: The Rule of Love: How the Local Church Should Reflect God's Love and Authority
- Author: Jonathan Leeman
- Publisher: Crossway
- Print Publication Date: 2018
- Logos Release Date: 2019
- Pages: 176
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Love › Religious aspects--Christianity; Church › Authority; Church › Marks
- ISBNs: 9781433559662, 9781433559655, 9781955768115, 1433559668, 143355965X, 1955768110, 9781433559631, 1433559633
- Resource ID: LLS:9781433559662
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-05-20T07:30:43Z
Jonathan Leeman is the editorial director of 9Marks, which involves him in editing the 9Marks series of books as well as the 9Marks Journal. He has written a number of books on the church, including Reverberation, and he teaches theology at several seminaries. Jonathan lives with his wife and four daughters in a suburb of Washington, DC and serves as an elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington.
