Yesterday the sermon at church was centered on I John 4:11-16. John is talking specifically to believers and discussing how believers should live and treat other believers. To me, verse 11 is the crux of the matter here: “Since God so loved us, we aught to love one another.” Something our pastor said really resonated with me and that’s this – Since we love and serve an invisible God, all other believers and non-believers can see is God in us. God becomes visible in the world by how we love others. I need to read that idea over and over and think about it. God only becomes visible when I show Him to others and the world through love.
That’s a heady responsibility, and one that believers through the years have both triumphed with but also failed miserably on. Pastor used an example of the Matthew 18 principle to illustrate this. He made the point that Matthew 18 was not intended to be a legalistic protocol for kicking people out of the church, but a series of helps to confront someone who has gotten off track and restore them to God’s righteousness and the church. I absolutely agree. We must be vigilant to keep ourselves and the church aiming in the right direction and also careful not to ‘sweat the small stuff’.
When believers disagree, love needs to be the driving force, GOD’S love in us and through us, needs to be the driving force to a solution. Scripture needs to be searched, hearts opened, and TRUTH spoken. Love is required. It’s so important, though, to realize that sometimes love is hard. Love speaks difficult truths. Love isn’t always nice. The perfect example, of course, is Jesus. During His last week as a human, Jesus makes God visible to so many people by healing, by teaching, by explaining. He spoke hard Truth softly and with love. But look carefully. He doesn’t make nice all the time, though He never stops loving…He turns over temple tables, He curses a fig tree for being unfruitful, He calls the Pharisees who try to trap Him about taxes “Hypocrites.”
Wait, what? It isn’t loving or kind to call someone names. How can it be that our Perfect Example tells us to love others but then He Himself calls another someone a hypocrite (or a brood of vipers, or snakes, or blind guides or blind fools)?
The reality is that Satan perverts our call to love by asserting that love demands tolerance and acceptance at all costs – even at the cost of Truth. Satan wants Christians to forget Jesus’ actions that don’t sit easily under the heading of ‘nice’. The devil wants us to pervert God’s righteousness by accepting false teachings and sinful acts and calling it love. Where the rubber meets the road is speaking Truth in love and not amending Truth to include everyone’s sin.
