In light of some conversations with friends from my younger
years, I have been pondering lately what the word “love” really means. It seems that in our world today, the common
understanding of love is extreme “tolerance”. To show love is to tolerate the things another
person is doing, no matter what the thing is, or whether it is “good” or not.
We see this in a variety of issues today. We have talked about abortion, with many
people tolerating it in the name of “loving” women. I have even had a conversation with a friend
in the last month who said it was more loving to abort a baby than to let it
live in poverty.
However, even besides the logical fallacy this argument
presents, this is not really love. Real
love doesn’t just “live and let die”, but has genuine concern for what happens
in a person’s life.
Think of parents who love their children. When a child wants to go to a party, the
parent asks for details out of love.
“Who will be there? What time
will you return? Will there be a
chaperone?” These questions are asked
out of love, because the parent doesn’t want the child to end up in a bad
situation. Or think of a parent whose
child uses drugs or who has a toddler that runs into the street. A loving parent does everything in their
power to stop these events from happening to their child, to keep them safe.
This is the same way Christian love works. We as the church ask questions about what is
happening in a person’s life and show true concern for a person, even when it
is not popular. We can’t, and won’t,
just let people assume their actions are ok when it is not in their best
interest in the long term, or when it goes against God’s Word. We love them too
much to let others continue in their sin and destructive habits. As St. Paul writes in his famous passage, “love
does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” (1 Corinthians
13:6)
So when a person falls into a sinful action, we in the church
are to show love – true love. This means
we don’t just stand by while sinful actions go on. It means we can’t say “It’s ok, they were
born that way and they can’t help it”. That answer cannot excuse true love.
When we stand up and say something, we show real love. “Abortion is killing a baby, no matter how
you justify it.” “God’s Word proclaims
the truth: it is not ok to live together outside marriage.” “Scripture is clear: homosexuality is a
sin.” “God wants more for your life than
for you to drown in a bottle of liquor.”
As we say these often unpopular
things, we actually show love behind them.
The way we say these
things is important too. If we were to
say these things harshly and derogatorily, they are not said with love. We must speak these truths in such a loving
way as to not lose our platform to speak to the person. We have all had a discussion in which the
other person got so angry at us that we no longer spoke to them at all. We should strive to avoid this, all while
understanding that we cannot control how the other person responds to our words
of love.
Love is not always easy.
Sometimes it is not popular.
Sometimes it hurts us immensely to do the loving thing, to tell our
loved ones what is best for them. Yet,
that is the very message of Christianity.
For this is love, “not that we have loved God but that He
loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10). Christ came and died for all our sins. He takes away guilt for each of those sins
above, and for countless more that you deal with. He did this all by His own death on the
cross, which we celebrate in only a few short days.
So, dear friends, what do we say to these things? St. Paul tells us in Romans, “Are we to
continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How
can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not
know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into His death? We were buried
therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness
of life.”
“For if we have been united with Him in a death
like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We
know that our old self was crucified with Him in order
that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no
longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died
has been set free from sin. Now if we
have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We
know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die
again; death no longer has dominion over him. For
the death He died He died to sin, once
for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So
you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ
Jesus.”
We are forgiven, and so cannot continue in our sin any
longer. We no longer can “live and let
live”. Instead, let us leave our sin
behind, and dwell in the love that Christ gives to us. It’s a cross-defined love that shows real concern
about us and what goes on in our lives.
So in conclusion, I would encourage you to show true love to
those around you. It’s a love that
forgives wrongs, even while we admit that they are wrong. It’s a love that does not begin with us at
all, but begins with the grace and mercy earned on the cross of Christ. That is true love.
In Christ,
Pastor
