4 Applications for the Order of Love—From the Home to the Ends of the Earth

The present hour calls for more theorists and practitioners to take up the task of explicating robust articulations of Christian love and duty applied to each of life’s concentric spheres.

Augustine’s idea of ordo amoris—the “order of love”—reflects the Scriptural pattern of directing our affections to first love God, then to love our families, and then to extend that love outward to others. This theme of ordered love has wide-ranging implications—from the home to the ends of the earth. But just as preaching without application is lifeless, so too is a study of love without practical exhortation. Here are four admonitions:

1. Embrace Biblical Tensions

First, the faithful Christian must embrace biblical tensions to live well. At the time of this writing, my wife and I are expecting our fifth child. As our family continues to grow, those who know us well are aware that we have faced acute challenges as a young household—not only as biological parents but also as adoptive parents. The tension between natural affection and gracious, freely chosen love is no abstract matter in our home. Each day reminds us that nature and grace are not neatly disentangled. Just as by grace we have been grafted into the natural branches of God’s family (Romans 11:17–24), so too have we grafted our oldest child into our natural family. Each day, we must choose not only to cultivate natural affection but also to practice sacrificial Christian charity, given unconditionally in the midst of conflict and the lingering effects of deep trauma. Frequently, we relive the failures of others and their tragic consequences. Frequently, we ourselves fail. Yet the Lord has taught us much. We have seen how the failure of popular Christian leaders to rightly form believers in the importance of natural affection has harmed adoptive families. In recent decades, many evangelicals have been sold an idealized view of adoption that minimizes its challenges, offers superficial theological arguments in its favor, and leaves Christian parents unprepared to navigate the tense dynamics between biological and adoptive children. At the same time, we have also learned that to live and love only along natural lines—which are at times the paths of least resistance—is to miss out on some of the richest aspects of God’s empowering grace. But why would we expect anything different from God’s design for us? Is it not fitting that we who, contrary to our sinful nature, have been adopted into the family of our Father should also be called to live in such a way that we both give and receive self-giving love—not only with our natural kin but also with those who are, by nature, different from us?

Regardless of our stations in life and our distinct vocations, each of us is called to embrace the difficult task of harmonizing natural and spiritual obligations. Whether we struggle to balance family and ministry, domestic and international missions, or cultural engagement and evangelism, the simple biblical truth is that each of these areas of responsibility makes real claims upon the Christian. Sometimes the answers are straightforward; those with disordered households, for instance, have no business leading others in ministry. But ironically, it is when a relative degree of Christian obedience is achieved in each of these spheres that the believer faces the most complex array of overlapping claims upon his attention. This is a feature, not a flaw, of faithfulness. In some sense, the ideal of a perfectly balanced life in every season is farcical. Christian obedience more often means waking early to invoke God’s blessing on the day, putting one’s hand to the plow of daily duties without looking back, and going to bed tired. As the saying goes, men are like trucks—they drive straighter with a heavier load. Of course, Scripture condemns frantic activity and commends the restfulness of faith (Psalm 127, Hebrews 4:9–10, Matthew 6:25–34). We are to be more like Mary than Martha (Luke 10:38–42). Yet, in general, the godly life is the strenuous life. And part of the strain of Christian obedience comes from the many distinct obligations laid upon the believer in each sphere of life. We must embrace this strain rather than flee it in disobedience.

2. Reject Pietistic Idealism

Second, we must reject pietistic idealism. Piety, rightly understood, is essential; the classical virtue of pietas entails not only loyal devotion to the divine but also to one’s fathers, country, and customs. Pietism, however, takes what is vital—true godliness—and turns it inward, severing it from its fruit. It insists upon detachment from temporal callings, disinterest in worldly affairs, and indifference toward created goods, promoting a conception of the Christian life that is almost exclusively “spiritual.” For the pietist, there is no problem for which more prayer and Bible study are insufficient remedies. At best, this impulse regards evangelism as the sole Christian solution to worldly disorder—yet even evangelism is reduced to a narrow set of steps for the salvation of the soul and escape from the present age, rather than the authoritative proclamation of Christ’s lordship over every sphere of human life. The result is a mindset that drifts toward gnostic contempt for the body and aversion to the political, exalting the spiritual and ecclesial as though they were the only domains of true significance.

Over and against such retreatism, Scripture commends a proper worldliness. We are not to be worldly in the sense of being given over to sin or enthroning anything above the Lord in our hearts, but we are to be worldly in the sense of receiving and savoring God’s blessings, acting in our neighbor’s best interest both eternally and temporally, and recognizing the goodness of God displayed in the material. The pagan enemies of the early church were confounded by the witness of Christians not on account of their soaring rhetoric or rigorous exposition but their care not only for their own poor but even the heathen poor.¹ The unbelieving, idolatrous philosophies of the world may invent religious traditions that plunge into carnality, or cults that flee from earthly existence altogether, but only the faith of the incarnate Son of God enables a heavenly minded life of earthly good. We will not love well until we embrace the eternal as well as the earthly nature of our mission.

3. Embrace Individual Callings

Third, the church must embrace the variegated nature of individual callings. Paul’s teaching on the many members of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12–27) compels us to acknowledge a wide range of emphases among sincere believers. Yet despite the abundance of resources on spiritual gifts, evangelicals often struggle to welcome differing approaches to Christian engagement. For some, politics are to be avoided; for others, public policy is essential. In many quarters, evangelism and missions are idolized, and all sorts of earthly goods are effectively sacrificed on their altar. Some retreat from the academy, the arts, or civic discourse into the sphere of evangelism and missions; others seek to shape culture while making disciples. Still others incline more toward mercy ministries in the community, the preaching and programs of the local church, or the ordinary labors of the home. Just as not every member of the body can be a mouth or an eye, neither can every Christian be equally engaged in the same form of ministry. Such variety is not only permissible but vital if Christian witness is to extend into every sphere of life.

The church must extend this grace to institutions as well as individuals. Congregations, denominations, classical Christian schools, for-profit ventures, lobbying groups, publishers, media networks, and missions agencies should not be expected to share the same priorities. The fact that one group of Christian citizens may pursue particular ends in one sphere does not mean they have forsaken the primacy of the Great Commission. The scattered church in the world is more like an orchestra—different sections producing harmony, tension, and resolution—than a group of identical instruments playing the same note. Christians, then, should resist prejudicially dismissing one another’s labors toward various temporal and eternal goods. For example, the church in the West may rightly direct united effort toward evangelizing the many peoples from the Global South arriving on its shores, while at the same time affirming the legitimacy and necessity of believers in the civic realm who advocate for sound immigration policy aimed at preserving the cultural continuity. Because God exercises both a sovereign will of decree and a moral will of command, we often see providence accomplishing multiple purposes through single events. Mass migration, for instance, may represent both a strategic evangelistic opportunity (Acts 17:26–27) and a form of national judgment (Deuteronomy 28:49–50). Wise living requires us to acknowledge such nuances and to discern, according to capacity, need, desire, circumstance, and calling, where our energies are best invested.

When I was teaching on the order of love in a local church, one listener posed a perceptive question: “What is your goal?” The study of the ordo amoris and its place in Christian life and mission can be pursued from many motives—some noble, others less so. Yet the burden should be clear: Each faction of the Christian community needs the others. The family-centric members of Christ’s body described earlier require the missionary zeal of their counterparts, and those devoted to outreach and global mission must be reminded of the call to build sturdy marriages, children, and institutions at home. This relationship is not merely corrective but reciprocal and reinforcing. The most fruitful missionaries may well be those who preach, disciple, plant churches, and train leaders with the same zeal and courage that mark a godly culture-builder laboring for righteousness in civic life. In turn, those focused on the family and the nation must see their story within the broader sweep of God’s plan for all nations, knowing that their labors are not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). It is ever the strategy of the enemy to divide, but it is the will of the Spirit that God’s people, exercising distinct callings, should strive side by side for the advance of the faith (Philippians 1:27).

4. Restore Our Churches to Sustain Missions

Let us heed the final clarion call to restore our home churches to sustain missions abroad. Where the church has historically prospered in free nations rooted in Christian principle, missions movements have emerged to carry forth the gospel. But where the church has been beleaguered, marginalized, or systemically persecuted, churches focused on their own survival typically lack the capacity to pool resources and send gospel workers abroad. If we love the world—and we must—then our greatest service to its evangelization may be to fortify the foundations of Christian families, healthy congregations, and free, Christian societies from which missionaries can be commissioned and sustained.

Through the years, many have pondered John Piper’s profound pronouncement that missions exists because worship doesn’t.² But it is also true in another sense that missions exists because worship does. When God’s people faithfully and fearfully worship the triune God in spirit and in truth, walking in obedience out of gratitude for His all-sufficient grace, the natural overflow is joy carried to the nations. Likewise, when the fruit of Christian love is borne in proper order, we may prayerfully expect that our charity will extend beyond our immediate circle of influence. Our capacity as creatures is limited, but God’s is not. The one who multiplied a few loaves and fishes to feed the multitudes is able to redeem the ordinary loves of people and place and deploy them as His harvest among the nations. To speak of Christian living—or of Christianity itself—apart from love is a contradiction in terms. In a world of chaotically disordered affections, where what is vile is celebrated and what is good is bent inward on itself, recovering the order of love is essential to our mission. It is by this that all nations will know we belong to Christ (John 13:35). Let us, then, follow our order to love.

Interested in empowering your church to send workers into God’s harvest?

Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from the seventh chapter of Alex Kocman’s book Ordered to Love: Recovering the Order of Affections from the Home to the Ends of the Earth (Cape Coral: Founders Press, 2026).

[1] Consider the complaint of Julian the Apostate that “it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us”: Julian, “To Arsacius, High-Priest of Galatia (Letter 22),” in Letters. Epigrams. Against the Galilaeans. Fragments, trans. Wilmer Cave Wright, Loeb Classical Library 157 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), 71, https://www.loebclassics.com/view/emperor_julian-letters/1923/pb_LCL157.71.xml.

[2] John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 35.

Note: This post originally appeared on ABWE’s website at Read More. Reposted with permission.