Do You Love Love?

September 21, 2026

A man stopped at a yellow light even though he could have made it through. The woman behind him slammed on her horn, screamed, and lost her composure. A police officer pulled up, saw her rage, and also saw the bumper stickers on her car: “What Would Jesus Do,” “Choose Life,” “Follow Me to Sunday School,” and a chrome Christian fish. He assumed the car had been stolen. After all, no one who belonged to Jesus would act like that.

The story is funny until it is not. Many of us wear the symbols of faith more easily than we live the love those symbols point to. Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commands.” Love for Him is not proven by what we display on a bumper. It is proven by a heart that actually wants Him.

Research over the years has confirmed what many of us already sense. The moral lives of churchgoing Christians often look little different from the lives of those who never darken a church door. We have grown skilled at wearing the symbols of faith while remaining cautious, comfortable, and largely unaccountable. Tolerance has often replaced discernment. The result is a visible Christianity that can look more like the world than like Jesus. The officer in the story made a reasonable assumption. The watching world makes the same one every day.

Francis Chan tells of Grandma Clara, who used to say, “I love love.” She meant it. Every morning she knelt by her bed and spent precious hours with Jesus. Later in the day, just the sight of that corner of the bed would bring tears and a deep anticipation of the next morning in His presence. She treated God the way people treat someone they are madly in love with. At her funeral it could be said honestly that few people have ever been more excited to see Jesus.

John Piper asks a searching question, “If you could have heaven with no sickness, all your friends, all your favorite food and beauty and pleasure, and no conflict or disaster, could you be satisfied with heaven if Christ were not there?” That question exposes whether we love the gifts more than the Giver. It is possible to want the benefits of faith without craving the Person at the center of it.

Imagine a bride who is thrilled about the dress, the flowers, the food, the honeymoon, and the gifts, but is indifferent to the man waiting at the altar. She wants a wedding, not a husband. Piper’s question is the same test. If we want heaven’s joy without Jesus, we want the wedding without the Groom.

Paul said that to live is Christ and to die is gain. He counted everything else as loss compared with knowing Jesus. He was not eager for heaven mainly because suffering would stop. He was eager because Christ was there. If someone had offered Paul a pain-free, friend-filled, beautiful eternity without Jesus, he would have refused it. That is Piper’s question in the life of an apostle.

Jesus does not call us to a cold checklist of obedience. He calls us into a relationship so real that obedience becomes the natural overflow of love. We cannot keep His commands in our own strength. When we try, we often end up with guilt and frustration. Grandma Clara was not grinding out religious duty. She was in love. That is what God wants, not slaves who serve out of obligation, but sons and daughters who desire Him.

The offer is the same for every one of us. Do you love love? Do you love Jesus Himself, or only the comfort, identity, and safety that come with being a Christian? Bumper stickers are easy. A heart that kneels each morning because it cannot wait to be with Him is something else entirely.

Where has your love for Jesus become more symbol than substance? If heaven could be wonderful without Christ, what does that say about what you actually want? What would it look like this week to treat Jesus the way Grandma Clara did, not as an obligation, but as the One you are eager to meet?

I invite you to take an honest look at your heart. Ask Him to replace religious appearance with real desire. Ask Him to teach you to love Love — to love the Lord Jesus with the kind of affection that changes how you drive, how you speak, how you obey, and how you wait for the morning.

Jesus is not merely the way to a better life. He is the Life. When we love Him for who He is, our lives begin to look like His, and His name is lifted high. (To learn more about Al Earley or read previous articles, see www.lagrangepres.org. You can purchase my book, My Faith Journal, at Amazon.com, a compilation of 366 articles as a daily devotional. Check out my podcast on YouTube, called “My Faith Journey”).