The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

I’m sitting next to my son Noah on a train heading to Munich, hoping we’re in the correct seats. Our first night in Berlin, we got yelled at by a drunken, angry German who looked like an extra from Sons of Anarchy. We were mistakenly sitting in his seats at a Metallica concert. As he flexed his massive pythons and barked orders at us from behind his waist-long beard, I saw my life flash before my eyes. I don’t know exactly what he was saying, but I promise it wasn’t, “Welcome to Berlin!”

Staring out the window at the vast mountains of Austria, I can’t help but think back to a conversation Noah and I had yesterday. We’ve been reading the teachings of Jesus together, keying in on the topic of love. One of the Jewish teachers of the day asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was. Essentially, he wanted to know if Jesus could give a summarized version of the entire faith. So Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Defining “love” can be tricky. I remember the first time I said those three magical words. Holding that corded landline phone with sweaty palms and butterflies in my stomach, I found the courage to blurt out “I love you” before saying goodnight to my sixth-grade girlfriend. I had communicated my undying love for her before, but it had always been written in carefully folded notes, secretly passed between friends like covert ninjas in the hallways of our middle school. This time I put it all on the line and said it out loud.

She hung up the phone.

It’s the greatest love story ever told.

As an awkward twelve-year-old boy, I obviously had no idea what it meant to love. I’d like to think that after taking fifty trips around the sun, I would have a better understanding. I’ve heard it said that gray hair is a sign of wisdom. I’m not certain that’s true. I am certain it now grows faster from my ears than from the top of my head. And my ability to fully “love my neighbor as myself” is shaky at best.

The Greek word for love Jesus used in this conversation was “agape.” By definition, a sacrificial love. A kind of love that requires us to take our eyes off ourselves. This love is not a feeling but a daily choice to put the needs, wants, and desires of others over our own. It’s not easy to love this way.

I do start my days with every intention of showing agape love to the people who cross my path. But it goes south fast. I can be driving to Sunday morning church, wearing my Jesus T-shirt, listening to Jesus music, while sharing breakfast tacos with Jesus Himself, when some moron recklessly cuts me off in traffic. In roughly 2.8 seconds, I morph from love to rage. I’m ashamed to admit that on more than one occasion, after brilliantly pulling a NASCAR-type maneuver to avoid a collision, I’ve responded by yelling a few choice words out the window. And they weren’t of the “agape” nature.

Some people are hard to love. It’s not easy showing love to the neighbor who always lets his massive horse of a dog drop a deuce on your front lawn with no intention of picking it up. Lighting it on fire and throwing it over his fence would feel so much better. It’s hard showing love when the obnoxiously rude woman working the register at your local Piggly Wiggly starts running her mouth. Firing back with a cleverly worded insult feels great in the moment.

As hard as it can be to respond in love to strangers and neighbors, I think it’s infinitely harder to show love to the people closest to our hearts. The lifelong best friend who did or said something that hurt you deeply. The family member who continues to let you down. The spouse who betrayed your trust in the worst kind of way. Moments like these cut deep. Learning how to see past your wounded heart and respond in love is especially difficult.

But this is the kind of love Jesus was talking about. He never said it would be easy. He understands it’s not something you feel like giving. Showing agape love to others, especially to those who have offended or hurt you, is a choice.

Life has a way of hardening your heart if you let it. Learning how to respond to others in love keeps you from becoming cold and jaded. My prayer lately is that God would help me love unconditionally, the way He loves. I want to see others through His eyes. I want my heart to break for people the way His heart breaks. This is the man I want to be remembered as when I’m gone. I’m not there yet — but I’m trying.

One of my favorite memories from this trip was watching Noah climb to the top of a mountain in the Bavarian Alps above the town of Berchtesgaden. As he looked down at me, grinning from ear to ear, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I was so proud of the wonderful young man he had become. I was humbled that God gave me the honor of being his father. And I couldn’t believe sixteen years had already passed. I know he will never fully grasp how much I love him.

It’s moments like these when the story of the cross becomes unfathomable to me. How did God do it? How did He allow His only Son to be viciously beaten and nailed to a tree for you and me? God loved us so much that He willingly offered His Son as a sacrifice so that we might have a relationship with Him. It makes no sense to me. Because if I’m being brutally honest, if the eternal destination of your soul depended on my willingness to hand over Noah as a sacrifice — we are all in trouble. But He gave His Son to die for you and me. This is agape love.

Jesus once said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” And then, hours later, He did. This truly is the greatest love story ever told.