Ellul on biblical love

To say that God loves is to say that God submits himself to human initiatives.  For example, when Jesus Christ is revealed to us in the New Testament as the witness of God’s love and the incarnation of that love, it is because he submitted totally to whatever humanity wanted to do with him.  In the Sermon on the Mount also, love implies this kind of acceptance of the superiority of others over yourself.  I believe these are the two primary elements of a relationship of love in the Bible. 

Jacques Ellul, On Freedom, Love, and Power (35)