Can I Love Jesus Without Caring About Theology?
Question 0006
This question comes up more often than you might think, and it usually comes from a sincere place. Someone genuinely loves the Lord, feels close to Him in prayer and worship, but finds theological discussions dry, divisive, or intimidating. “I just want to love Jesus,” they say. “Why do I need to get bogged down in all this doctrine?”
The short answer is this: loving Jesus and knowing theology are not competing activities. They are the same activity viewed from different angles. To love someone is to know them, and to know Jesus is theology.
What Is Theology?
The word theology simply means “the study of God” — from the Greek θεός (theos), meaning “God,” and λόγος (logos), meaning “word” or “study.” When you read your Bible, you are doing theology. When you pray, you are applying theology. When you tell someone that Jesus died for their sins, you have just made a theological statement. The question is never really whether we will have theology, but whether our theology will be good or bad, true or false, biblical or man-made.
You Cannot Love Someone You Do Not Know
Think about this practically. Imagine someone who claims to love their spouse deeply but has no interest in learning anything about them — their history, their character, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and dreams. We would rightly question whether that person truly loves their spouse or simply loves a feeling they associate with that person. Love, by its very nature, seeks to know the beloved.
The Apostle Paul understood this. Writing to the Philippians from prison, he declared: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). See that Paul does not say he counts everything as loss because of his feelings about Jesus, though he certainly had deep feelings. He counts everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus. This is not cold intellectual knowledge — it is personal, transforming, intimate knowledge. But it is still knowledge. Paul wanted to understand who Jesus was, what He had done, what He was doing, and what He would do. That is theology.
The Hebrew word for “know” — יָדַע (yada) — carries this same depth. When Scripture speaks of knowing God, it means far more than intellectual awareness. It implies relationship, intimacy, and experiential encounter. Yet this relational knowing does not bypass the mind; it engages the mind fully.
As J.I. Packer wrote in his classic work Knowing God: “Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing… yet it is not less knowledge of God for being personal knowledge.”
Jesus Commands Us to Love God with Our Minds
When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus replied: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). The mind is not excluded from our love for God — it is included in the very command itself. We are to love God intellectually, not only emotionally. This does not mean that every Christian must become a professional theologian, but it does mean that every Christian should be growing in their understanding of who God is.
The Apostle Peter reinforces this when he writes: “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Growth in knowledge is not optional. It is part of our sanctification, our becoming more like Jesus. When we refuse to engage with theology, we stunt our spiritual growth. We remain, as Paul described certain believers, “infants in Christ” who can only handle “milk, not solid food” (1 Corinthians 3:1-2).
The Danger of Theological Ignorance
The person who says they love Jesus but cares nothing for theology is actually in a precarious position. Which Jesus do they love? The Jesus of the New Testament? Or a Jesus of their own imagination?
This is not a hypothetical danger. The Apostle Paul warned the Corinthians about those who preach “another Jesus” and a “different gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4). False teachers throughout history have claimed to speak for Jesus while distorting His person and work. Without theology — without careful attention to what Scripture actually teaches — we have no way to distinguish the true Jesus from the counterfeits.
The early church father Irenaeus of Lyon, writing in the second century, faced exactly this problem with the Gnostics who claimed special knowledge of Jesus while denying His bodily incarnation. In his work Against Heresies, Irenaeus argued that love for Jesus must be anchored in the apostolic teaching preserved in Scripture. Without doctrine, love becomes sentimentalism at best and idolatry at worst.
Charles Spurgeon put it bluntly: “The man who has no doctrine at all is a spiritual jellyfish, driven about by every wave of opinion.” We may think we are loving Jesus while actually loving a projection of our own desires onto Him. Only through careful biblical study do we encounter Jesus as He truly is.
Theology Protects What We Love
Consider how this works in other areas of life. A doctor loves their patients and therefore studies medicine rigorously. Their knowledge is not in competition with their love — it serves their love. A parent loves their child and therefore learns about child development, nutrition, education, and safety. Again, knowledge serves love.
In the same way, theology protects our love for Jesus by ensuring we understand Him rightly. The great creeds and confessions of the church were not produced by people who loved doctrine more than Jesus. They were produced by people who loved Jesus so much that they wanted to guard the truth about Him against distortion.
When the Council of Nicaea met in AD 325, they did so because they loved Jesus and refused to let His deity be compromised by the Arian heresy. When the Reformers risked their lives to recover the doctrine of justification by faith alone, they did so because they loved Jesus and the gospel of grace He purchased. Theology is not the enemy of devotion; it is its guardian.
The Balance We Need
Now, having said all this, let me offer a word of pastoral balance. It is possible to pursue theology in a way that becomes proud, cold, and argumentative. Some people treat doctrine as a weapon rather than a treasure. They love being right more than they love Jesus or their neighbour. This is a real danger, and we should guard against it.
Paul warned Timothy about those who have “an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words” (1 Timothy 6:4). There are people who can define every theological term but whose lives bear no fruit of the Spirit. Head knowledge without heart transformation is worthless and an easy trap to fall into.
The solution, however, is not to abandon theology but to pursue it rightly — with humility, love, and dependence on the Holy Spirit.
As A.W. Tozer wrote in The Knowledge of the Holy: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Our theology shapes everything — how we pray, how we worship, how we live, how we treat others, and ultimately how we love Jesus.
Conclusion
So, can you love Jesus without caring about theology? In the truest sense, no. To love Jesus is to want to know Him better, and knowing Him better is theology. The question is not whether you will have beliefs about Jesus, but whether those beliefs will be shaped by Scripture or by culture, by apostolic teaching or by personal preference.
The good news is that theology, rightly pursued, does not diminish our love for Jesus — it deepens it. The more we understand the depths of our sin and the heights of His grace, the more we marvel at the cross. The more we grasp His sovereignty and His tender mercy, the more we trust Him in trials. The more we see His beauty revealed in Scripture, the more our hearts burn within us.
Do not be afraid of theology. It is simply knowing the One you love. And there is no one more worthy of being known than Jesus Christ our Lord.
“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”
Philippians 3:8 (ESV)
Bibliography
- Irenaeus of Lyon. Against Heresies. Translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1885.
- Packer, J.I. Knowing God. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973.
- Ryrie, Charles C. Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1999.
- Tozer, A.W. The Knowledge of the Holy. New York: Harper & Row, 1961.
- Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1987.
- MacArthur, John. The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.
- Stott, John. Your Mind Matters: The Place of the Mind in the Christian Life. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1972.
- Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994.
- Chafer, Lewis Sperry. Systematic Theology, Vol. 1. Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press, 1947.
