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Ordered to Love: Recovering the Order of Affections from the Home to the Ends of the Earth
Modern Christians face a crisis of love. Shaped by globalism and liberal individualism, contemporary culture has stripped love of its proper order and detached it from the concrete relationships that give it meaning. What once was a society formed by loyalty, obligation, and location has been replaced by an ethic of openness without roots. In response, many evangelicals have embraced a vision of world mission that is sincere yet placeless—zealous for the nations but inattentive to the families, churches, and communities through which God ordinarily works.
At the same time, renewed concern for nation, peoplehood, and belonging has reemerged, particularly in the West. Yet when severed from biblical theology, these affections can become disordered, collapsing either into idolatry or into a narrow self-interest that neglects Christ’s command to disciple the nations. The question, then, is not whether Christians should love their own, but how that love is rightly ordered so that it overflows rather than competes with obedience to the Great Commission.
In Ordered to Love, Alex Kocman argues that Scripture provides a clear hierarchy of affections: love for God first, then the church, followed by neighbor, nation, and finally the nations beyond. When love follows this order, Christians are preserved from both rootless cosmopolitanism and solely inward-looking nationalism. Drawing from Scripture and the Christian tradition, this book presents a theological vision in which grace restores nature—reforming households, strengthening the church, ordering national life, and advancing the gospel to the ends of the earth.
For pastors, thinkers, and believers longing for coherence between love of home and love for the world, Ordered to Love calls for a recovery of rightly ordered affections—from the home to the nations, for the glory of God.
At the same time, renewed concern for nation, peoplehood, and belonging has reemerged, particularly in the West. Yet when severed from biblical theology, these affections can become disordered, collapsing either into idolatry or into a narrow self-interest that neglects Christ’s command to disciple the nations. The question, then, is not whether Christians should love their own, but how that love is rightly ordered so that it overflows rather than competes with obedience to the Great Commission.
In Ordered to Love, Alex Kocman argues that Scripture provides a clear hierarchy of affections: love for God first, then the church, followed by neighbor, nation, and finally the nations beyond. When love follows this order, Christians are preserved from both rootless cosmopolitanism and solely inward-looking nationalism. Drawing from Scripture and the Christian tradition, this book presents a theological vision in which grace restores nature—reforming households, strengthening the church, ordering national life, and advancing the gospel to the ends of the earth.
For pastors, thinkers, and believers longing for coherence between love of home and love for the world, Ordered to Love calls for a recovery of rightly ordered affections—from the home to the nations, for the glory of God.
- GenresTheology
Hardcover
Published January 1, 2026
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February 5, 2026
Today's American evangelicals widely assume something that virtually none of their spiritual forefathers did. Ours is a belief that God's grace to us in Christ destroys or fundamentally reorders our nature, and specifically the natural order of our relationships and their attendant responsibilities.
This is evident in how celebrity evangelicals, pastors, seminary presidents, and parachurch organizations of all stripes approach the topic of foreign missions. Much ink and many words are spent crafting emotionally-laden pleas to the perennial next generation, charging them to invest their time, money, prayers, and talents in any locale except America, for the explicit benefit of any group other than American Christians. This is, they're adamantly assured, what Jesus truly expects of them, and it is on this point, they claim, that virtually every prior generation of Christians failed to exhibit true Christlikeness.
Yet anyone with two eyes cannot help but notice the rapid onset collapse which is leaving virtually no portion of America untouched, a combination of crises which others-focused evangelicalism has caused, fed into, and been exacerbated by. Cities riddled with unchecked crime; historically unseen percentages of young families unable to own the homes in which they wish to raise their children; an increasing tax burden on all but those wealthy and savvy enough to lobby for backdoors and legal loopholes; that same tax money being openly used to support government and NGO fraud to the tune of billions of dollars; rampant violent sexual degeneracy promoted at all levels of government and education; and a demographic replacement of Americans that would make yesteryear's genocidal warlord blush with envy. Rivaling - indeed, surpassing and directly causing - all these physical phenomena is the longer-tenured stint of moral and religious decay which has all but withered a once vigorous and vibrant Christianity in which society at large was once ensconced. And at the root of this fundamentally altered faith is an inversion of loves.
Christ has commanded us to love our neighbor. But who is he? Does my neighbor live next door, speak my language, adhere to my customs and general values, and hold a worldview at least mutually intelligible with mine? Or is my neighbor anyone the government decides to import and house right across the street (and that on my dime), no matter our inability for mutual basic communication or the absence of any cultural, moral, or religious similarity? Was the term "neighbor" merely Christ's stand-in for "every single human being on the face of the planet, at all times"? Further, does the Gospel require us to forsake the well-being of our own people and place in favor of others the world over? Rather than simply leveling the relational playing field, does being a follower of Christ now require us to inordinately favor the spiritual, physical, and financial security of those most dissimilar to us while our own nation, churches, towns, even children, languish in the total decay that inevitably accompanies nationwide apostasy? From a belief system which plainly mirrors globalism more than the faith delivered once for all to the saints, many evangelicals would answer these questions in the affirmative.
What Kocman puts forward in this book makes for the beginnings of a sorely needed medical intervention for the patient who is evangelicalism. The arguments he presents are grounded in Scripture, nature, and in the rich Christian tradition, and their cumulative effect, rather than asserting a novel ordering of loves (ordo amoris), is to show what God's people have believed about God's created order until all but ten seconds ago, namely that our human relationships and accompanying responsibilities have a natural and divine ordering to them, and that to neglect, downplay, or invert this ordering is to transgress against the God who orders all things.
The whole book is beneficial, but Kocman shines in three particular areas. The first concerns the order of love according to God's Word. Rather than basing everything in natural law, Kocman adeptly demonstrates that the relational order we all understand instinctively is actually assumed in the Scriptures, and at times is clearly stated with imperatives. The second is his brief treatment of historic Christian thought on the ordo amoris. He evidences well that this concept is not a novel, reactionary grasping at racist straws, but is rather something with a rich history of articulation and realization by Christians and non-Christians alike, which spans not only the lifetime of the New Covenant Church but even predates it in the pagan world. The third is his direct dealing with the unspoken assumption of many evangelicals that "grace destroys nature." Contrary to this, and in keeping especially with the Protestant tradition, Kocman explains how God's grace to us in Christ restores our natures, and the natural relationships contained therein.
American Christian, do not feel guilty for having a preference for those closest and most similar to you. You have no need to justify your desire to live among and work for the benefit of the people and places in and among which God has established you. The Gospel creates no new obligations upon you regarding the vague, nameless conglomerate that is the world and its masses, but rather strengthens your obligations to your existing relationships and renews your spirit to truly love your neighbors as God would have you. These things remain true, and no amount of weepy conference sessions, "radical" publications, or missional pontification disguised as sermons may tell you otherwise.
I gladly commend Kocman's work to all those Christians who wrestle with the ordering of their domestic and familial obligations against their supposed obligations to the "needs of a dying world"; to those Christians who have been raised and "discipled," as I was, to see every vocation and interpersonal relationship not done in service to global missions as lesser-than; to those Christians who understand instinctively, yet cannot quite articulate, the gross injustice and perversion of an evangelicalism that puts goats first and its own sheep last.
Christ will have the nations, and it is through us that God's glorious Gospel will spread throughout all peoples as leaven in dough. But this will not come through a xenophilic Christian Globalism; it will come through a radically localized love of people and place. May we truly love our true neighbors, and may this love then overflow to the ends of the earth by our example through the efficacy of the Spirit.
This is evident in how celebrity evangelicals, pastors, seminary presidents, and parachurch organizations of all stripes approach the topic of foreign missions. Much ink and many words are spent crafting emotionally-laden pleas to the perennial next generation, charging them to invest their time, money, prayers, and talents in any locale except America, for the explicit benefit of any group other than American Christians. This is, they're adamantly assured, what Jesus truly expects of them, and it is on this point, they claim, that virtually every prior generation of Christians failed to exhibit true Christlikeness.
Yet anyone with two eyes cannot help but notice the rapid onset collapse which is leaving virtually no portion of America untouched, a combination of crises which others-focused evangelicalism has caused, fed into, and been exacerbated by. Cities riddled with unchecked crime; historically unseen percentages of young families unable to own the homes in which they wish to raise their children; an increasing tax burden on all but those wealthy and savvy enough to lobby for backdoors and legal loopholes; that same tax money being openly used to support government and NGO fraud to the tune of billions of dollars; rampant violent sexual degeneracy promoted at all levels of government and education; and a demographic replacement of Americans that would make yesteryear's genocidal warlord blush with envy. Rivaling - indeed, surpassing and directly causing - all these physical phenomena is the longer-tenured stint of moral and religious decay which has all but withered a once vigorous and vibrant Christianity in which society at large was once ensconced. And at the root of this fundamentally altered faith is an inversion of loves.
Christ has commanded us to love our neighbor. But who is he? Does my neighbor live next door, speak my language, adhere to my customs and general values, and hold a worldview at least mutually intelligible with mine? Or is my neighbor anyone the government decides to import and house right across the street (and that on my dime), no matter our inability for mutual basic communication or the absence of any cultural, moral, or religious similarity? Was the term "neighbor" merely Christ's stand-in for "every single human being on the face of the planet, at all times"? Further, does the Gospel require us to forsake the well-being of our own people and place in favor of others the world over? Rather than simply leveling the relational playing field, does being a follower of Christ now require us to inordinately favor the spiritual, physical, and financial security of those most dissimilar to us while our own nation, churches, towns, even children, languish in the total decay that inevitably accompanies nationwide apostasy? From a belief system which plainly mirrors globalism more than the faith delivered once for all to the saints, many evangelicals would answer these questions in the affirmative.
What Kocman puts forward in this book makes for the beginnings of a sorely needed medical intervention for the patient who is evangelicalism. The arguments he presents are grounded in Scripture, nature, and in the rich Christian tradition, and their cumulative effect, rather than asserting a novel ordering of loves (ordo amoris), is to show what God's people have believed about God's created order until all but ten seconds ago, namely that our human relationships and accompanying responsibilities have a natural and divine ordering to them, and that to neglect, downplay, or invert this ordering is to transgress against the God who orders all things.
The whole book is beneficial, but Kocman shines in three particular areas. The first concerns the order of love according to God's Word. Rather than basing everything in natural law, Kocman adeptly demonstrates that the relational order we all understand instinctively is actually assumed in the Scriptures, and at times is clearly stated with imperatives. The second is his brief treatment of historic Christian thought on the ordo amoris. He evidences well that this concept is not a novel, reactionary grasping at racist straws, but is rather something with a rich history of articulation and realization by Christians and non-Christians alike, which spans not only the lifetime of the New Covenant Church but even predates it in the pagan world. The third is his direct dealing with the unspoken assumption of many evangelicals that "grace destroys nature." Contrary to this, and in keeping especially with the Protestant tradition, Kocman explains how God's grace to us in Christ restores our natures, and the natural relationships contained therein.
American Christian, do not feel guilty for having a preference for those closest and most similar to you. You have no need to justify your desire to live among and work for the benefit of the people and places in and among which God has established you. The Gospel creates no new obligations upon you regarding the vague, nameless conglomerate that is the world and its masses, but rather strengthens your obligations to your existing relationships and renews your spirit to truly love your neighbors as God would have you. These things remain true, and no amount of weepy conference sessions, "radical" publications, or missional pontification disguised as sermons may tell you otherwise.
I gladly commend Kocman's work to all those Christians who wrestle with the ordering of their domestic and familial obligations against their supposed obligations to the "needs of a dying world"; to those Christians who have been raised and "discipled," as I was, to see every vocation and interpersonal relationship not done in service to global missions as lesser-than; to those Christians who understand instinctively, yet cannot quite articulate, the gross injustice and perversion of an evangelicalism that puts goats first and its own sheep last.
Christ will have the nations, and it is through us that God's glorious Gospel will spread throughout all peoples as leaven in dough. But this will not come through a xenophilic Christian Globalism; it will come through a radically localized love of people and place. May we truly love our true neighbors, and may this love then overflow to the ends of the earth by our example through the efficacy of the Spirit.
March 16, 2026
This is an excellent, careful, and well-reasoned book that should be read by anyone trying to order their loves and lives rightly and to navigate our times with wisdom.
February 13, 2026
If you grew up in evangelicalism fifteen years ago, you've probably read David Platt's "Radical." Platt took aim at the so-called American Dream and told an entire generation of young Christians that a comfortable, rooted, ordinary life was basically suspect. While perhaps well-intended, it caused a lot of damage; vocation and place got buried under a vague guilt about not doing enough. Kids raised in good Christian homes ended up in quiet conflict with their own parents, suspicious of the stable life they'd been given, as if gratitude for home was a kind of unfaithfulness. As a result of this movement, people have lost a sense of rootedness. They go to certain parts of the country and won't even hear their own language anymore. A real sense of loss and aimlessness has captured our society, and Alex does a good job at pinpointing why. Why do we feel so homeless?
Ordered to Love is the book a lot of us needed in 2010. Kocman traces the idea of rightly ordered affections through Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Lewis, and more, showing that Scripture assumes love has direction and weight: God first, then the household, the church, the neighbor, the nation, and then out to the nations beyond. This isn't some excuse for insularity (quite the opposite). Local faithfulness is what makes genuine global concern possible. You don't love the world well by neglecting the people God actually put in front of you.
The demands of piety and the natural affections that tie us to families, tribes, and nations are not in competition. Serving God reinforces our duties to parents and children. Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. He walks through the history carefully and makes a convincing case that the disorder most Christians feel—the overwhelm, the guilt, the sense that every distant crisis is a measure of your faithfulness—comes from having our loves out of order, not from loving too little.
Highly recommend this one.
(Disclosure: I received an early copy and endorsed it)
Ordered to Love is the book a lot of us needed in 2010. Kocman traces the idea of rightly ordered affections through Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Lewis, and more, showing that Scripture assumes love has direction and weight: God first, then the household, the church, the neighbor, the nation, and then out to the nations beyond. This isn't some excuse for insularity (quite the opposite). Local faithfulness is what makes genuine global concern possible. You don't love the world well by neglecting the people God actually put in front of you.
The demands of piety and the natural affections that tie us to families, tribes, and nations are not in competition. Serving God reinforces our duties to parents and children. Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. He walks through the history carefully and makes a convincing case that the disorder most Christians feel—the overwhelm, the guilt, the sense that every distant crisis is a measure of your faithfulness—comes from having our loves out of order, not from loving too little.
Highly recommend this one.
(Disclosure: I received an early copy and endorsed it)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews