LOVE: The Greatest Power Ever Known

Summary

This Scripture-rich book explores what Pastor Alfred Cherubim, describes as, “five vital truths about love”: God loves unconditionally; He commands us to love; we are unable, in our own strength, to love as God loves; we can receive empowerment from God to enable us to love supernaturally; and we are able to access that love through faith in the Savior Jesus Christ. The author maintains that each person’s greatest need is to love and be loved, and he unwraps for the reader the distinctions in three Greek words translated into the one English word “love.” Cited are: eros, sensual desire; phileo, love for an individual deemed worthy of love; and agape, God's love, the purest, deepest love expressed, not merely through emotions, but through an act of one's will. The author then centers the book around the Bible’s love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, and agape, the supernatural, unconditional love, supremely revealed through Jesus’s death on the cross for our sins. This love, the author asserts, is the love the Lord wants to produce in us and through us to others by His Holy Spirit. This agape love is given, he contends because of the character of the person loving rather than because of the worthiness of the object of that love. Sometimes it is love "in spite of" rather than "because of." Pastor Alfred argues that individuals can only be moved to live in and share agape love when in relationship with the living God, Jesus Christ. He illustrates the nature of this love through stories drawn from the Bible {The Parable of the Prodigal Son) and from his own personal experience: a hospitalized child reenergized for life through the agape love of a teacher, a man filled with hatred toward everything and everyone who was transformed by agape love.