I will sometimes fail the people in my life. Sometimes we forget to love someone. Sometimes life is just too busy. God never forgets. He ALWAYS loves.

Oh, How He Loves Us…

This is a pretty hard concept to understand to be false without some knowledge of the Bible and what it says about salvation. For someone who do not know much about the bible this statement is very reasonable. But to those who do, this statement can be summed up in one scripture. Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

I would have to say that this topic, along with many other topics of this kind, has to be seen with this view: God IS love BUT, God is JUST. If God were ONLY love then we would get everything, even that which might come to harm us. But if God were ONLY just then we would all get what we deserve–a conscious,eternal torment in hell. I am glad God is the essence of the perfect combination.

I was sitting in the atrium of my school cafeteria today and couldn’t help but overhear a conversation this girl was having with one of her friends. She was telling him about her older step-brother being gay. As she told the story, she went through all of her childhood with him and the kind of relationship that they had and so on. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she really didn’t like the relationship that they had now, after he had told the family that he was gay. She described it as though his sin had somehow distanced her and her family from him. I could tell that she was hurt and that she still really cared for her brother even through all that had happened. She went on to say that his birthday was coming up and that she was writing him a letter and sending him a present, hoping that this would be the start of fixing their relationship.

From the story, I gathered that she lived in a Christian home because she kept saying “I know what my brother is doing is sin. I won’t tell him otherwise. But I also will not condemn him because of it. I will show him love.” This statement: “I will show him love” really caught my attention. It was almost as if she was saying ‘I will show him love and through love I will show him truth.’ In this moment, I felt like my spirit man grew up a little bit. I felt that in that moment God was showing me something. And here is my attempt of putting my finger on it.

Sin is a wretched, nasty, vile, thing. It is something that we all struggle with and journey to overcome. Sometimes we think that if we just forget about sin, this is the best way of dealing with it. But we cannot forget about sin. It plays such an important role in our everyday lives as Christians. It is the reason for the fall of mankind. It is the reason for our daily repentance. And dare I say, it is the reason for our salvation. Without sin there is no need for salvation. No need for a savior because there would be nothing to be saved from.

The bible addresses sin. From the fall in Genesis to Jesus’ coming in Revelation chapter 22. But what the bible has to say about sin and the world’s spin on what the bible says about sin is two different things. In society, sin is broken up and thought of on different levels. This sin is worse than that sin and therefore this sinner is worse than that sinner. But this is not true to the Bible. The Bible does not put degrees on sin in the sense that one sin is worse than the other EXCEPT, the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31). This is the only sin that is unforgivable. With this in mind, think back to the story that the girl was telling– How the sin of her brother distanced him from her and her family. Why? Because they did what most would do. They put a degree on sin. When in God’s eyes his sin of being a homosexual is no worse than lying.

This brings us, I believe, to a very gray area in the church today: the balance between ‘forgiveness’ and ‘love.’ The Bible calls us to love. To, in a sense, show the compassion of Christ. And the Bible also tells us to forgive. But nowhere in the Bible does it say to condemn someone for their sin (Luke 6:31). So where do we as Christians draw the line? First, I believe that this is so much bigger and that there is so much more to this than I can get to in this post so I will try to keep it simple.

I believe that the answer lies within this truth in context of the Bible: God is love (1 John 4:8) but, God is just. We are called to be fishers of men. To catch them but not clean them. God will change their hearts and minds we just have to help them to get in the position for God to do so. John 1:10-13.

In this moment, the same moment as some sit entertaining themselves watching reality T.V., which is anything but REAL, while others are being robbed of their innocence behind closed doors. We consume while the widow and the orphan are stripped of life’s dignities — victims of a conflict that is not theirs. It is not fair to choke on obesity while others starve for food. We can sing and dance in our freedom and our liberty while the slave remains captive; out of sight out of mind. We watch the evening news from the comfort of our homes while we pity those where the storm hit, the ground shook, and the waters rose. We walk by the homeless with the assumption that he will spend any money we might give him on booze or cigarettes. But, who are we to judge the alcoholic, the criminal, the prostitute, or addict as if we are any better? Who are we to forget the downtrodden, oppressed, marginalized while we go about chasing the dream. To see the imbalance but not do anything about it because we know that it will COST us something. If that is where it ends, we may as well say that we add to the pain, abuse, entrapping, displacing, and robbing of the poor and the needy. The only fair thing to say is that when we forsake the lives of others, we forsake our own… -Joel Houston (paraphrase)

When I read these words I can’t help but feel that somewhere in my walk I have missed it. Inside of me I know that for some reason I should care about this “imbalance” but up until now i haven’t. Sure, I have love for other people but not the right kind. Just the “easy” kind of love. The kind of love that dosen’t COST me anything… It was here in this moment of thought that I realized that somewhere along the line I have been too busy to pay attention to the most important element in my relationship with my savior. For some reason, when I read this I think of one word — love. And with the thought of this one word was born inside of me this revelation: “I have no idea how to love my savior.” Which in turn made me realize that I had no idea how to love other people either. I began to think about love. What it is. The purpose. The meaning of “to love.” I remember reading a book entitled “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman. In his book, he writes about love and how it fits into relationships. As I was thinking about the five languages as he describes in his book: touch, words of affirmation, gifts, quality time, and acts of service, I wondered “what is Jesus’s love language?”

In the Bible, John 21: 15-17, I think Jesus explains the kind of love that He wants us to have. Within these verses Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. But this is not the important part. The important part is when Jesus says “Feed my Sheep.” Basically, Jesus was saying to Peter “I will know that you love me when you take care of my PEOPLE…when you tend my sheep.” The fact of the matter is that loving Jesus isn’t about what we say… it is about what we do. When we say “I love you lord,” what we have to do to evaluate our love is to ask ourselves “does my life reflect a care about the things that Jesus cares about?” Loving Jesus is about doing the things that He has asked us to do. Loving Jesus is caring about the things that He cares about.

And what does Jesus care about… PEOPLE. Jesus loves PEOPLE.

He was committed to reaching PEOPLE, to loving PEOPLE, to ministering to PEOPLE. He reached out to the rich and to the poor, to the powerful and to the prostitute, to the social outcast and the socially connected, to the lame, the sick, the blind. Jesus loved PEOPLE. He reached out to PEOPLE. He told people the good news. He came because he loved PEOPLE. Jesus was committed to PEOPLE.

Now ask yourself: “Does my relationship with my savior reflect this kind of love?” And then an even tougher question: “Why?”

Think about a relationship between husband and wife. If the wife’s love language is quality time but the husband is constantly buying her gifts to make up for all the times he had to stay late at work, then the husband is not truly loving his wife like she wants to be loved. This is the same as our relationship with Jesus. Who are we to think that we can have a relationship that is even worthy to be called a “relationship” if we do not even speak the language?

Whatever the call. Whatever the COST.