tobie van der westhuizen

What Others Are Saying about JUST LOVE

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Today, you can secure your copy of Just Love, available at Amazon. In a few weeks, we will have copies available through Lifestream so people can order bulk quantities at significantly reduced costs for those who want to share with friends or host a book study. Here’s my invitation:

 

If there isn’t a viewer in your email, you can click on this link.

 

We had a few advance readers take an advance look at Just Love, and here’s what they said about it:

The most significant book on theology I have read in the past 30 years. This book offers insights in why faith gets stuck in a perpetual cycle of not righteous enough or far too righteous. These issues in this slender volume have the deepest roots and the most profound consequences. A great read for anyone who hopes for a better tomorrow.
—Ron Vincent, retired high school teacher in California

Stunning! Absolutely life-changing! Not since Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Church or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the turn of the century has there been such an important rediscovery of truth. It’s amazing how one unfortunate mistranslation of an essential part of the Gospel can be so breath-takingly simple and yet so transformative. This changes everything!
—Brad Cummings, co-author, publisher, and movie producer of The Shack

I could barely make it past the first page before I was overcome with emotion. From the very beginning, the presence of Abba’s heart is unmistakable—woven into every word with tenderness, truth, and divine intention. This book didn’t just move me; I was undone in the most beautiful and transformative way. It reached places in my heart I didn’t even realize were waiting to be touched, leaving me both humbled and profoundly changed. This is not just a book you read—it’s an encounter you experience. I whole- heartedly give it a 15 out of 10.
—Daron Maughon, musician in Nashville

A phenomenal read—justice written on our hearts! Perhaps the most important book written for our time. The reality of justice found within properly understood love resets Scripture to its original intent, revealing the purpose and trajectory of love, justice, and the Kingdom of God.
—Mike Rea, title agent in Florida

Just Love beautifully expresses the transforming power of love, a love so personal and metamorphic that it brings actualized justice and “expresses the kingdom of God” in this messy world. When I read that God “is the most endearing presence in the universe and the ultimate source of our provision,” I wanted that truth to sink so deeply in my mind and soul that I would never forget it.
—Tracy Levinson, former atheist and author of Unashamed-Candid Conversations about Dating, Love, Nakedness, and Faith

A most helpful, readable, wonderful book, providing a refreshing look at what it means to be a Christ-follower in this age of religious overdrive. You thought you knew it, but in Just Love, Wayne and Tobie offer eye-opening insight into the layers of God’s justice and love. No more faith in our religious performance, traditions, or personal piety. We can come with arms wide open to a God who has loved us from the start and place our faith in His just, life-giving hands.
—Dr. Stephanie Bennett, communication professor and author of Within the Walls, and Relationships on the Run

Just Love is at times a scholarly lexicography, and at others a thought-provoking personal journey of two men. Many paragraphs beckoned long pondering. Love within us is Christ’s call to us. Blessed are we to be loved and love. Thank you, Wayne and Tobie, for further reasons to let God lead our ways.
—Marty Beert, former school district superintendent

I’ve no doubt Just Love is God’s call today to the Body of Christ. The Reformation was a response to radical shifts in politics, tech-nology, and access to information when the Body of Christ had moved away from the heart of the Gospel. Just Love brings the same invitation to us in similar circumstances. It both confronts those who have abused power and need to be humbled, and it lifts up those who have labored under oppression. This is an invitation back to our roots—to the love we need to receive from God, and then how that love flows through us to the world.
—Tom Stephen, pastor, Monte Vista Presbyterian

In He Loves Me, you helped to define love. In Just Love, you redefine the justness of Father, and how the fullness of his love lets us share his passion for justice. I am soaking up this book. It is thrilling to read, but it’s messing with me. I cannot get past the statement, “Established by a ruler-king yet to come, his kingdom would not be predicated on the justice of a written law but the justness of love!”
—Jack S., retired pastor in South Carolina

Concise, easy to read, and soaked in love, Just Love is a significant work with a transformative message. By replacing ‘righteousness’ with ‘justice’ in our English translations, Scripture becomes so much more accurate, understandable and life-giving. Why all this is true is the reason you will want to read this book. Wayne and Tobie brilliantly attest that becoming morally perfect is not the goal of the Christian life, but rather it is about embracing God’s love—and when you do that you naturally become a vessel of God’s love and justice in the world.
—Sean Kennedy, author of Church Uncorked: Leadership That Releases Our Potential

Just Love is as timely and potent as anything I could imagine. Its resounding message of personal righteousness vs. justice for all our neighbors is akin to an asteroid hitting the planet. I’m not sure there’s been a more important spiritual discovery during my time on this earth. Prepare to be challenged and hopefully, changed. This is the book that each and every Christian needs to read and ponder. And it might very well be what your heart and spirit have been longing for your entire life.
—Bob Prater, co-author of A Language of Healing for a Polarized Nation

This little book is so good; it’s an invitation to a lifelong exploration in the best and most transformative way—to encounter the love of God and to be changed from the inside out. Living within this love, I am becoming a woman who is willing to be in the mess of life, not having to fix everything, but to have the courage to let him meet me, hold me, and change me even through heartache. And living this way, God will invite others through us into this sacred way.
—Dana Andreychen, poet and mother

This is far more than an explanation of how “righteousness” in the New Testament is actually “justice.” It is a call to live justly, to move from the idea that we can be “righteous in God’s eyes” and still hate our enemies. It charges us to love as we are loved, to be just because He is just. Treating others as you would like to be treated is Jesus’ definition of justice. It reflects Father’s unconditional love for us. Justice is a call to action. Righteousness is the state of being that results from being just. Justice comes first.
—Phil Hinton, vascular surgeon

If you only read one book this year, make it this one! This book uncovers and clarifies a truth your soul needs! Just Love is a key that unlocked areas of my spiritual journey and practical living while simultaneously giving me a new way to hear God throughout the Bible. Buy a few copies; you’re going to want to give some away so others will understand what you’ll soon be unable to stop talking about!
—Samantha Schmeltzer, mother and entrepreneur

Love is the living fountain within us, and justice is its overflow. Humanity needs to wake up to this. To live in Just Love is a high calling, offering each reader the quiet, supernatural work that opens a human heart. Approach these pages the way Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers, “that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened… that you may know the love of Christ which passes knowledge.” This little book is best received with deep humility, seeking revelation and surrender to the love of a Father who is love. In that posture, something lasting can happen, not inspiration that fades, but transformation that settles into bone and breath. —Dr Stephan Vosloo, occupational medical practitioner

We are printing copies now and will offer bulk discounts on Lifestream when they arrive, hopefully by the end of the month. We do not have an audio version of this book available now, but we will be putting one together in the next couple of months.

"Just Love" - How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the GospelJust Love:
How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the Gospel
by Wayne Jacobsen and *Tobie van der Westhuizen
174 pages
Trailview Media
Available from Amazon, Tuesday, March 3
in Kindle ($10.99)
or in Paperback ($16.99)

 

*Tobie, Wayne’s coauthor, is a former pastor and holds a PhD in Higher Education. In addition to his work overseeing a private school in Bloemfontein, SA, he writes at JusticeofGod.com and answers questions on the Bible and spiritual matters at quora.com/profile/Tobie-28.

Hear Wayne, Tobie, and Kyle discuss their new book on the most recent edition of The God Journey.  

 

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What Others Are Saying about JUST LOVE Read More »

Just Love – Chapter 1

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All my life, I have sought an authentic Gospel that does everything Jesus promised. It would rescue those perishing in the darkness of this age and invite even the simplest people into an intimate engagement with his Father that would lead them to life—here in this age and the age to come. Connecting with him would unravel the darkness that twists our world into pain and bondage and lead his people into the ever-increasing joy of knowing him and the freedom of being transformed by his love.

Seventeen months ago, I got an email from a stranger in South Africa that told me there was a significant flaw in our English translations of the Bible. Tobie van der Westhuizen had discovered that the Greek word translated as ‘righteousness’ for the past 500 years is actually the word for justice. Early translators had chosen a word in English that had no equivalent in Greek or Hebrew, and using it had led to a distortion of the Gospel Jesus would have preached, and Paul would have explained. Admittedly, I was skeptical at first, but the more I explored his research, I realized that he was on to something. That led to hours of conversations and eventually an idea for this book called Just Love: How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the Gospel.

We are excited to release this book on Tuesday for others to explore this with us. It may seem like a subtle shift at first, but he implications are profound. I haven’t been as excited about a book I’ve helped to write since The Shack. And honestly, this completes the message of He Loves Me, which I’ve often said is the most significant book I’ll ever write—until now! This is how God’s love not only flows to us, but through us to change the world we inhabit. I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally see this book in print.

In advance of that release, here is Chapter 1 of what I hope will help us see the power of a Living Gospel, which was not just meant to save us from hell, but also to transform us by the power of Christ to change the way we live and love in this age.

_____________________________

page15image65280512Chapter 1

A MISSING PIECE

Buckle up—we are about to take you on a journey that has profoundly shifted our understanding of Scripture and, even more importantly, the trajectory of our spiritual lives. It just might for you, too.

What if you discovered that a mistranslated word in Scripture distorted its meaning for us today? And what if that one word was so significant that getting it right might alter not only the course of your life, but of Christianity itself?

We want to suggest to you that while the Reformation was a crucial step forward in freeing followers of Jesus from performance-based religion, the way it’s often misunderstood today may unintentionally obscure the best part of salvation—Jesus’s desire to transform us from within so we reflect his kingdom in this present age.

We reached these conclusions by very different routes. I (Wayne) arrived here relationally. More than thirty years ago, I encountered the Father’s love in a way that rewrote my spiritual story, especially after growing up in more legalistic environments. Tobie’s path was fueled by a hunger for authentic faith, guided by linguistic and theological insights that I had never considered.

When our lives intersected in late 2024, everything clicked. What Tobie shared explained how love had already been teaching me to live. Now I had Scriptural terminology for it. By resolving a mistranslation of a single English word in Scripture, I could finally see the map of the spiritual territory I’d wandered through for decades. The rich conversations that followed launched this collaboration—and ultimately this book.

If what we propose is true, it unifies Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, weaves salvation and the kingdom of God together, and clarifies what Jesus intended for our transformation. It doesn’t replace the Gospel I learned earlier—it completes it. Others throughout history have tried to call God’s people back to this simple, transformative reality, but the noise of cultural religion has often drowned out their voices.

So, we write in hopes that you’ll consider these things. Search the Scriptures to see if they hold up. If they do, you too can step into a fuller, more vibrant experience of the Gospel today.

When Something Doesn’t Add Up

Have you ever been in a situation where nothing seemed to make sense, only to learn later that it was because you didn’t have all the information?

I recently went through something similar in my marriage. Unbeknownst to either of us, my wife, Sara, had been sexually assaulted by family members between the ages of four and eight. Un- able to process her pain at such a young age—and having no one safe to confide in—her mind buried those memories deep within her. But in her fifties and sixties, a deep pain began to push its way to the surface. Erupting like a volcano, it manifested as complex PTSD and a deep self-loathing that pushed her toward suicidal thoughts. Unable to contain or explain her anguish to anyone, she hid it behind kindness and caretaking, fawning over everyone—including me—so no one would discover what a horrible person she thought herself to be.

During that time, our conversations made little sense to me. I sometimes thought she was being evasive, but my attempts to understand her only led to frustration for both of us. Caught in the torment of a trauma she did not remember, Sara said whatever she thought I needed to hear just to survive the moment. Eventually, the debilitating pain drove her to seek counseling, and she was told she must have been traumatized. Because she had no memories of her childhood abuse, the counselor wrongly concluded that she must be married to an abusive husband. She encouraged Sara to leave me, which she did while I was away on a twelve-day trip to the East Coast.

Imagine my shock when I got home to a letter sitting on the kitchen counter, saying that our marriage had been painful for her, and that she either had to take her life or leave me. Thankfully, she chose the latter, but the shock of her leaving devastated me. This wasn’t the woman I had been married to for forty-seven years. As far as I knew, our life had been wonderful, with minimal conflict. What was I missing?

It took five weeks and a change in counselors for us to find our way back to each other. That’s when Sara discovered that I had not been the source of her pain. The real “monster” came from a deep-seated trauma inflicted by her extended family decades earlier. I’ve since walked beside her as those memories have surfaced and as Jesus heals her heart and rewires her mind.

Discovering her childhood trauma was the missing piece we both needed. Once that came to light, we understood not only the pain she endured and why she coped with life the way she did, but also how even my most innocent actions could trigger her trauma. That insight is what we needed to walk into the future with increasing healing. Today, I get to stand by Sara as her husband, encourager, and confidant as she continues her courageous journey toward wholeness.

Over the past year, I’ve had a similar revelation in my theological journey. I have come across a missing piece in my understanding of salvation and the kingdom of God. Like discovering Sara’s trauma, this new insight illuminated not only my past and the struggles I’ve had with some aspects of Christianity, but it also gave me a renewed vision for what salvation was truly meant to be.

For years, I’ve wrestled with a troubling question: How could Christianity produce so many converts and so few deeply transformed lives? Too often, salvation is seen merely as a ticket to heaven, rather than the beginning of a new kind of life here. As a young pastor, I was discouraged by how many believers seemed to seek only the minimal commitment necessary to “stay saved.”

For two thousand years, we have been more preoccupied with fighting sin—and often each other—than learning to love our neighbors. Yet, Jesus said that the world would recognize us by our love. (John 13:34–35) Sadly, that’s not the testimony most people see. Dallas Willard described our approach to discipleship as the “Gospel of Sin Management”—a message that drives people to try harder, only to feel more shame when they fail. But that’s not the Gospel Jesus brought. It’s simply another form of the old performance-based religion he came to free us from.

What I’ve come to realize is this: There’s a vast difference between practicing a religion called Christianity and actually living in the life of Jesus. Somewhere along the way, I had missed a crucial piece of the Gospel.

_____________________________

 

"Just Love" - How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the GospelJust Love:
How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the Gospel
by Wayne Jacobsen and *Tobie van der Westhuizen
174 pages
Trailview Media
Available from Amazon, Tuesday, March 3
in Kindle ($10.99)
or in Paperback ($16.99)

 

*Tobie is a former pastor and holds a PhD in Higher Education. In addition to his work overseeing a private school in Bloemfontein, SA, he writes at JusticeofGod.com and answers questions on the Bible and spiritual matters at quora.com/profile/Tobie-28.

Hear Wayne, Tobie, and Kyle discuss their new book on the most recent edition of The God Journey.  

Just Love – Chapter 1 Read More »

The Sequel to He Loves Me

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Love is not a commodity you can possess; it is a river of life, flowing from the Father in which he invites you to dwell.

It’s not just a doctrine to comfort the intellect, but a way of engaging God’s presence as you go about your day. Resting in his affection makes it easier for us to entertain his presence, and living in that flow of life will change you over time. Love will not only define how he engages you, but also how you treat others—all others, not just those who think as you do.

Those who seek to contain love in themselves will find that it will wither away like day-old manna. That’s why it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone—not because he needed a wife, per se—but because the love God poured into him needed a recipient to flow out to. God’s love is easy to preach or write about since nothing is truer in all the world than that God is love and that he deeply loves those he created. What I find troubling is that so many people who teach and write about love in the vertical sense are some of the worst practitioners when it comes to sharing that love with others. They treat others, even their own staff, with anger and impatience. They constantly push past other people to be noticed or to build a following. They can even ignore others being abused around them, because they only love certain types of people.

As you live in the love of the Father, you will notice that it cannot be apportioned out to people you like best. Love is love, and you can’t truly live in it without it changing you to be as aware of others as you are yourself.  You don’t have to try to love; it becomes part of your being.

That’s why I’m so excited that this new book is finally finished. Just Love wasn’t even in my heart fifteen months ago. But through an intriguing email, I began a relationship with Tobie van der Westhuizen from South Africa, and out of that growing friendship, the idea for this book was born. His research into a mistaken translation in the Greek captured my heart because this was what love had been teaching me throughout the three previous decades. Now, I have biblical language to make sense of it and a better understanding of what Jesus accomplished to share his love with the world through people made just by their growing trust in him.

I’ve often said that He Loves Me is the most significant book I’ll ever write. If people only read one book of mine, that’s the one I would choose for them. It represents the most poignant shift in my spiritual journey—from trying to appease God so he would love me, to discovering that he already did. I didn’t have to wake up every day trying to be loved by God, but instead woke up as his beloved. That journey for me began over thirty years ago, and it continues to bear fruit in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I started. I want everyone to go on that journey.

However, in the last few years, when I would say it was the most significant book I’ll ever right, I’d feel a nudge inside saying, “So far.” I’d chuckle and dismiss it because I couldn’t think of anything on my radar screen of future writing that would come close. Now, I wonder where those words came from. Advanced readers of Just Love tell me that this is the most important book they’ve ever read, and I don’t disagree. While He Loves Me deals with our vertical connection to the Father through the Son, Just Love couldn’t be a more appropriate sequel. It is about how love flows through us to fulfill all that Jesus hoped for in demonstrating the glory of his kingdom amid the chaos of this age.

It is about God’s hope fulfilled in his justice, not by people performing better for him, but as the inevitable byproduct of people delighting in his love. How has Christendom missed this for so long?  Because of an unfortunate mistranslation of a single word in the Scriptures took our focus off of God’s justice revealed in the world, and instead preoccupied us with sin management and personal piety. I can’t wait for you to read this book, not only how it will change your reading of Scripture to be more true to what the authors intended, but also because we outline this amazing process where love works out God’s life in us. This makes the connection between the Old Covenant law, salvation, transformation, and kingdom.

It has been an absolute delight to work with Tobie to coauthor this book, and I am excited to introduce you to him in this book and in future podcasts. I wholeheartedly embrace what he wrote in our dedication:

Whoever reads this book will soon realize it could not have been written by either of us alone. It is the shared witness of two lives who followed Christ on different continents for nearly a century between them. It reminds us that true community reaches beyond the limits of one mind or one lifetime. In these pages, two worlds merge—the world of reflection and the world of lived experience—and that meeting is no accident.

The publication date is March 3. In a few days, you’ll be able to pre-order the book on Amazon.com and have it delivered as soon as it drops. I’ll be sharing some of that content here in future blog posts, as well as the comments some of our advance readers made about this book.

Just Love completes beautifully what He Loves Me started over twenty-five years ago. I’m so glad this has come about, and can’t wait to hear what you think or take on some of your questions as you process this significant shift in our understanding of the work of salvation.

As Brad said in his endorsement above, the content of this book could really change everything.

_________

And a couple of announcements before I go.

We are updating our mailing list and have found a significant number that did not check “marketing permissions” when they signed up on our list. Yes, I know it’s crazy, but it’s a MailChimp issue. Even though you are signing up for a subscription to my blog or to The God Journey, you also need to check that box as their permission to send email on my behalf. I promise it wasn’t about including you in a lot of marketing emails. So, if you are not getting the email notices you signed up for, that may be why. Please go to your MailChimp account and update your preferences.  (If you received this blog update in your email inbox, you’re all set.)

Also, I wanted to remind you that I’ll be in Bradenton, Florida, this weekend. If you’re nearby, you can join me.  Check my travel listing for details. On Saturday, I’ll be hosting a six-hour conversation focused on It’s Time: Letters to the Bride of Christ at the end of the Age. It will be broadcast via Zoom from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. If you’d like to join in, you can use the Zoom Link here.

 

The Sequel to He Loves Me Read More »

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