I’ve heard it said, leadership is not the ultimate thing; love is. I couldn’t agree more. An overemphasis on leadership could lead to love being neglected. But an overemphasis on love could also lead to leadership being neglected. The husband who leads his wife but demonstrates no love for her is a poor leader. Likewise the husband who tells his wife that he loves her but demonstrates no leadership loves her poorly.

Leadership is love. At its best, leadership is love in action.

For a leader, to love is the supreme act of leadership. Interestingly, Jesus taught that to love is to lay down your life for others and that to lead is to be a servant of all. It turns out love and leadership are the same thing, inseparable and indistinguishable from one another.

To lead others is not ultimately about me the leader, but about the people I’m leading and serving. While leadership in the beginning may be driven by a love for leadership and a desire to be the best possible kind of leader, the best possible leadership and leader are in the end driven and marked by a love for people.

We should lead from love, to love, and by love.

Love doesn’t exist, and it can’t be known, apart from the choices we make and the actions we take. Neither can leadership. But love doesn’t exist in isolation. Love doesn’t begin on its own.

Love exists between. It begins with two, not one. We could not know what it means to love ourselves, if we did not know what it means to love someone else. And we could not know what it means to love someone else, if we did not know what it means for us to be loved by someone else.

A Biblical understanding of God is that God is Trinity. And a Biblical understanding of love is that God is love. Love is trinitarian, plural. More than one. More than “me”.

Love has its origin, its source, its flow from within the relationship of the Father, Son, and Spirit. To be created in God’s image, then, is to be created loved. We are loved by God. But it’s also to be created loving. We are created with a capacity and a desire for loving others.

Leaders, then, come to a people both loved and loving: they are loved by God and they are created wanting both to be loved and to love. Again, we lead from love, to love, and by love.

To build a culture of love, a people of love, is the high calling of leadership. Where love abounds, forgiveness, joy, peace, wisdom, creativity, humility, patience, kindness, truth, courage, gentleness, gratitude, generosity and more are sure to abound.

But to say that love is the high calling of leadership is also to say that the price and the cost of love is high. It’s not easy laying down your life for another—friend, stranger, and enemy. It’s not easy putting the good of others first and often at a personal loss. Love will go unreciprocated and rejected. It will be misunderstood and attacked. It will go unnoticed and unappreciated. But love accepts that before it knows that, before it comes to experience that. The leader commits to lead from love, to love, and by love.

Leadership is love. For those called and who choose to lead well, leadership will be, and always must be, love in action.