Still Thinking...
What does it mean to love?
The best I can come up with is that love is equal parts grace and truth. I heard a speaker once say that truth without grace is legalism, and grace without truth is license. If our love is going to do anybody any good, we have to strike a balance between the two.
Love is not rejection. That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but it is something I have been discovering little by little as of late. Not that I previously thought love was rejection. What has dawned on me recently is that if something can get in the way of love, then that love is flawed. And can it even be called love after that? Our love for others should be tenacious, especially if it is modeled after God's own love for us. Paul said, "I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). And I am convinced that our love should take after His.
Sin makes it hard to love people sometimes. We live in a fallen creation; sin is everywhere. Humanity lies rotting all around us. We know we are supposed to avoid sin, to repent of it, to rebuke it. But what happens when the object of our rebuke and the object of our love take up residence in the same soul? Once I thought to myself that God was a master at taking the bad with the good. Then I realized it was the opposite: God is a master at separating out the bad, even to the subatomic level, and dying for it.
But the redemption of creation is a process not yet complete. And so we find ourselves in lives that will never be completely perfect, with people who will never be completely perfect. Perfection, or holiness, is the goal, but our Christian lives trace a parabolic curve. We could go on for infinity, coming ever closer, and never touch that line. Knowing this, shouldn't our aim be to get, and help others to get, as close as we can? I am less concerned that my loved ones live sinless lives as I am that they meet Jesus before they die.
Homosexuality does not send people to hell. Overindulgence in alcohol does not send people to hell. Murder does not even send people to hell. The only sin by which people relegate themselves to eternal damnation is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31), in other words, rejection of Jesus Christ as Savior. Everyone begins spiritual life in a state of rejection against God. We have to choose, each of us as individuals, to cross over into a relationship with Him. What precipitates this choice? People catch a glimpse of something attractive about God. His love. The Holy Spirit is a free agent, without need of help from believers, but He allows us to share in the process by being conduits of that love.
For a conduit to work it has to be open on both ends. We miss the extraordinary opportunity to see God work through us when we let our actions be dictated by the faults of others. Jesus loved the sinners, and rebuked the ones who thought they were doing everything right.
I am loving what you're writing on this. LOVING it.
Posted by: Lauren on June 16, 2006 10:27 PM