Marty’s (and My) Love Affair With Jesus

Dancing in the in the glory of "Herzensreligion"

Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash

(A four-minute read.)

A few months back, I was listening to “The Rest Is History” podcast, and the hosts—Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook—were doing a series on Martin Luther. It was really good and fascinating, bringing to life one of my all-time favorite historical figures (and arguably one of the top five or six most influential figures in world history).

But one quote they shared really stood out above the rest.

It was from Alec Ryrie, who’s a British historian at Durham University, reflecting on Luther’s approach to faith. “Luther’s doctrine,” Ryrie explains, “was not a doctrine; it was a love affair.”

I absolutely love that line!

What a way to describe his theological agenda. He had become smitten with Jesus and wasn’t simply trying to argue about and promote abstract ideas. He was lifting up the one who’d captivated his heart.

Just recently, I decided to track down Ryrie’s quote in context, and the whole paragraph, from the book, Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World, packs even more of a punch:

Luther’s theology was not a doctrine; it was a love affair. Consuming love for God has been part of Christian experience since the beginning, but Luther’s passion had a reckless extravagance that set it apart and which has echoed down Protestantism’s history. He pursued his love for God with blithe disregard for the bounds set by church and tradition. It was an intense, desolating, intoxicating passion, sparked by his life-upending glimpse of God’s incomprehensible, terrible, beautiful love for him. Like any lover, he found it incredible that his beloved should love him, unworthy as he was.

Again, how enrapturing and sublime!

I thought of this quote again last week as I was helping lead some meetings for young adults. During a little round-table discussion, the question was posed to everyone why it was they followed Jesus (assuming they did). After a number of the young people shared their perspectives, I added my two cents, and said that I follow Jesus because I’ve been drawn into an intoxicating symphony of love.

That’s one of the best ways I know how to describe it. As I’ve shared before, I have a deep, deep longing to feel and experience love. I believe loving and being loved lies at the heart of human existence.

And I’ve not found a better place to feel and experience love than in and through Jesus.

And I don’t simply mean Jesus as an ethical teacher—though he certainly was that.

I don’t mean Jesus as one whose example I try to emulate—though I certainly try to (imperfectly) do that.

I don’t mean Jesus as a political revolutionary, who tried to subvert the powers of his time—though he certainly did that.

I mean Jesus as Luther knew and uplifted him—the one who literally poured out his soul that I might live and be saved; the one who sacrificed himself on my behalf so that I could experience eternity; the one who bore my sins and extends forgiveness and pardon to me; the one who values and cherishes me, and who doesn’t require me to hustle for his approval and acceptance.

What I’m talking about is the Jesus whose transcendent love fulfills and satisfies the deepest longings of my heart.

This is why, by the way, I’d have a hard time going “all in” on progressive Christianity (among other reasons)—namely, because most progressive Christians I’ve encountered don’t make much of this Jesus.

This is the sort of Jesus that German Pietism, inspired by Luther, emphasized and uplifted—the Jesus that speaks to and touches the heart (what eighteenth-century German Pietist Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf called “heart-religion,” or Herzensreligion in German), focusing on one’s individual relation to Christ and the emotional experience that (often) produces.

In the hands of progressive Christianity—at least in my experience—Jesus is mostly just a social activist, primarily concerned with reforming institutions and systems, but not one who really speaks to the individual heart and remedies our eternal dilemma.

I understand the pushback, to some extent, since the Pietist strand of Christianity—which morphed into evangelicalism—often promotes a sort of escapist theology that primarily focuses on eternity to the neglect of the present.

Of course, I think Jesus is both social activist and individual lover. He confronts societal injustices and also seeks to draw us into a “personal relationship” with himself. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It can’t be one or the other.

But the Jesus I’m talking about here is the one who’s captivated my individual heart. He’s the one who provides inner peace, eternal acceptance, and lasting forgiveness.

He’s the one, in short, with whom I have a “love affair.”

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.