Personal Growth, Christian Living, Love & Marriage
Date Published: May 25, 2021
Publisher: Lucid Books Publishing
Explore the little-known truth about what it really means to love your
neighbor as yourself.
Loving your neighbor as yourself is an act of the will, not something you
feel. At least that’s what most Christians believe. But is that what the
Bible actually teaches? In Love Is an Emotion R. L. Lewis invites you to
take an honest look at the scriptures and determine the answer to this
question for yourself. As you reason your way through these pages, you’ll
discover:
● How the common view of “Christian” love
measures up to the test of logic.
● How the subjective nature of emotion
relates to the objective truth of God’s Word
● How a revised definition of love can impact
our understanding of the gospel of grace.
If you’re eager to explore the little-known truth about what it really
means to love your neighbor as yourself, this book is for you.
Excerpt
Whenever we experience an emotion, we genuinely feel it. Therefore, every time the Lord commands us to love, that love is something
we are expected to actually feel—even when he commands us to love our enemies (see Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27,
35). In other words, emotion is the obligation. To fulfill
that obligation without that emotion is to fail at fulfilling
that obligation altogether.
Obviously, no human being can simply conjure up
a genuine emotion for someone else on command. This
reality often serves as the primary reason to reject that
love is an emotion. Unfortunately, this conclusion falsely
assumes that the only way a person can fulfill a command
to feel something is by conjuring up that emotion out of
thin air. Yet even though God desires for us to feel the
love he commands, he does not expect us to do so by
willing such love into existence. The command isn’t to
fabricate love; the command is simply to love—a duty
made feasible only through his Spirit (see Gal. 5:22).
About the Author
R. L. Lewis was born and raised in Houston, Texas, where he currently
resides with his wife, Kayla, their son, and their 11-year-old dog,
Beatrice. A couple of years after earning his degree in applied mathematics
from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Lewis moved back to his
hometown to study painting at the University of Houston. Though he now works
in the art industry, he enjoys spending much of his free time on projects
that combine his affinity for analytical reasoning with his passion for
studying God’s Word.
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