No Greater Love: A Biblical Vision for Friendship (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780802428929)

Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends. -John 15:13

Our culture idolizes romance and the love of parents for their children. But Jesus said there was no greater love than sacrificial friendship love. What's more, He issued a command to His disciples that they live into this kind of love. Christian friendship isn't just a nice-to-have. It's vital. But it's also dangerous.

Friends can pull us up when we're knocked down, embrace us with their love, and spur us on to follow Jesus better. But friends can also grind us to the ground, exploit, or invite us into sin.

In No Greater Love, Rebecca McLaughlin walks us through the highs and lows of friendship love--a love that's been neglected and malnourished in our modern world. She draws especially on Jesus in the Gospels and on Paul to show how powerful and precious Christian friendship is and how we can walk through the hurt, loss, and disillusionment that comes from broken friendship trust. Beginning with the words of Jesus on the night he was betrayed and abandoned, she points us to His battle-tested love as the unending source of our best love for one another.

Male or female, single or married, joyful or lamenting, lonely or embraced, we all need friendship love. This book will help us give and receive it in a way that calls us back to Jesus's commandment: that we love each other just like He loves us.

About the Author
REBECCA MCLAUGHLIN holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature from Cambridge University and a theology degree from Oak Hill College in London. She is the author of 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity, The Secular Creed: Engaging 5 Contemporary Claims, Is Christmas Unbelievable? Four Questions Everyone Should Ask About the World's Most Famous Story, and Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion, which was named book of the year by Christianity Today. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband Bryan, her two daughters, Miranda and Eliza (who are co-authors of this book), and her son, Luke.