THE MESSAGE OF LOVE | A NEW BOOK
Patrick Mitchel, Director of Learning at IBI has recently had a new book, “The Message of Love”, published by IVP.
Love – such a deceptively simple and popular little word. There are few greater subjects in Christian theology – indeed in all of life – than love, yet it is a surprisingly complex and challenging concept to understand, let alone live by.
It is Patrick Mitchel’s conviction that in a post-Christendom world there is no more urgent missional challenge than for Christians to be walking the path of costly Christ-like love. The church’s task is not only to articulate what love is, but also to show to the world that Christianity is not about power or control or shame, but leads to a life of human flourishing within communities of radical love.
Such renewal will only come as Christians grasp afresh the breadth, depth, and radically countercultural nature of the Bible’s teaching on love. If this book helps, even a little bit, to put love back where it belongs at the centre of Christian teaching, preaching and experience, then it will have more than done its job.
“For close to two decades I have studied both how the Bible presents love and how Bible scholars have expressed that presentation. Luminaries such as James Moffatt and Leon Morris, from two considerably different traditions, have become standard treatments but I found both coming up short for different reasons. No one will ever offer the final word on what the Bible says about love, but I know of no volume that is as thorough, and sensitive to context and contour, as Patrick Mitchel’s sparklingly clear and faithful exposition of how the Bible presents love, how in fact the God of love loves the world and the people of God in Christ. This will become a standard text for my classes on New Testament theology.”
— SCOT MCKNIGHT, PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT, NORTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, LOMBARD, USA.