Hearing Chris Tomlin's new album, Hello Love really brought those thoughts to mind, so when I spoke with him, we talked about Love and what that word means to us both.
It turns out that the man who is sung in more churches across the world than any other singer / songwriter agreed with my thoughts about how we misuse the word love so frequently 100%.
"You said it so well that you could write what you just said and I would be in complete agreement with that," he said. "There is a complete difference between throwing the word love around with 'I love ice cream' and 'I love the cross'. That's two different things. The opening lines of Jesus Messiah really sums it up. The Scripture says He became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God. Like you said, Jesus loved us first. Everything happens because we're loved. It wasn't like 'Oh, let's just choose to love this God.' We were loved first. God is love and those who know Him, know love."
The album, Hello Love is a tribute to that very sense of love. The truest sense of the word is found in songs like "Jesus Messiah" and "Love" which features the Watoto Children's Choir from Uganda.
It's All About Worship
Chris explained, "The record is called 'Hello Love' because everything that you can boil down about our worship to God, it really boils down to love. The Scripture says 'Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your mind, your soul and your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. So our worship is first because God loved and loves us. And we love God so that hopefully works itself out in our love for our neighbor and our love for other people. The essence of what I believe the love of Christ is is that He became everything that separates from the love of God. He became our sin; he became all of the injustice in the world. He took on all of the anger, all of the adultery, all of the jealousy, all of the rage, all of the cheating and the lying, all of the stealing, the murder, the coveting ... everything ... he took it all on himself and he became that in our place so that we could be made right with God. Unbelievable! That should compel us to live a life that counts for something more than just ourselves." He continued, "It plays itself out in many ways; in the ways that we help others. If we're not caring about other people then the love of God is not in us. It's clear from the Scripture."
Practicing What He Preaches
Loving others isn't just something that Chris preaches. He practices it too in small ways as well as in huge ways. He shared one of his favorite ways of helping others. "When you open up the packing on 'Hello Love,' if someone buys the record, and hopefully they will, the biggest thing in there, the thing you cannot escape is onemillioncan.com. It's an idea. It's a movement that will help people flesh out what it means to love other people. Right now it's seven different causes that I'm really passionate about and that I've seen at work around the world. It's helping the least of these and the last in the world. It's child saving surgery in Central America. It's clean water in African villages. It's building a whole new Watoto village in Uganda, where all of the child soldiers are and rehabilitating them. It's providing a way out for sex slaves in India. It's translating the Word for people who have never heard it before; who have never read what we've read. That's a way to flesh out what this whole life is about and what it means to be a Christian."Talk about practicing what we preach. Wow! The love of Christ in action through us. That's how it is supposed to be.
Chris went on, "Today it doesn't seem like the word 'Christian' is associated with Jesus very much. It's more associated with a political idea or a religious right or whatever that's all about and that is a shame because what it's all about is love. God loves us and we love Him so we love our neighbors and the people that He created. But it's not happening in the world. Places are on the brink of annihilating themselves. This is not a time to say 'Oh we've heard enough about the love of God so let's move on to something else.' Apparently we haven't figured it out yet. It's not a tired idea. It is the only idea. And that is what 'Hello Love' is about.
