Scott Freeman

Be Love

Love is patient, love is blind
Never jealous, Love is kind
If my love is really true
Why can’t I be that way with you?
It’s easier said than done
Easy to talk that talk
How long will I run?
Till I walk that walk
It ought to be so easy to love someone
But it’s easier said than done (Darden Smith)

I want to be a person of love, but it’s not easy. I don’t love my wife and kids enough. I don’t love my neighbor enough.

There are times my prejudices and stereotypes still break through. But I’m working on that.

John, in his first epistle, in the midst of his warning against false doctrines and heresies drops this little bomb-shell: 1 John 4:7—8

Do you see that? If you don’t love others, you don’t love God. They are intimately and inextricably connected.

Hear this: if you don’t love God’s people, you don’t love Him. This is why I preach so much about this. It all comes down to love.

John tells us repeatedly this very thing in this epistle:
• If you don’t love your brother then you are not of God (3:10)
• If you don’t love you are dead (3:14)

John is clear about one thing: there are two aspects to spirituality, the horizontal and the vertical. And those two aspects are interwoven with each other.

Simply put, you cannot have a relationship with God (the vertical) if you don’t have a relationship with His children (the horizontal). Our vertical relationship is evidenced by the horizontal relationships.

John tells us that love flows both ways. It is evidenced by the life of Christ and if God loves us like that then we must love all of his children that way (4:9—12)
Can’t be emphasized enough.
If we concentrate on one at the expense of the other then both will become distorted. If we think that we can love God and fail to love all people then we can’t love God.
I’ve tried to qualify that in my life too often.

I have a phrase that I repeat over and over again. I don’t know where I got it.
That phrase is this: I would rather be guilty of loving too much than judging too much
I try to approach all of my dealings with people from that perspective. And it has made all the difference.
If I am to err in my dealings with people, let them accuse me of loving them more than being critical. More than being dismissive. More than judging.
You see, I’ve done too much judging in my life. I have typecast, stereotyped and dismissed.
I have lived my life with such an either/or mentality that I have failed to embody love.
Either they are strong and devout Christians that agree with me on all of the necessary issues or they are pagans and heathens bound for hell that need to know Jesus and His love.
Of course, there was no way that haughty attitude I possessed was going to bring them anywhere into the vicinity of the love of Christ.
I have driven past the beggar because it was “just a scam” or “they could get a job but they don’t want one.”
I have resisted going into “certain areas” because “a guy can get killed there.”
I have marginalized and dismissed people who fail to look like me, act like me, believe like me, or talk like me.
And too many of us Christians are guilty of this. We judge far more than we love.

Of course, such a phrase does not remain impervious to criticism that it is somewhat shallow theology. The reason that it opens itself up to such criticism is that we have co-opted the gospel to be something different than what it truly is.
I hear people all the time say that “we have to stand up for the truth.” That the Christian voice has to be heard among the din of evil voices that are seeking to topple the freedom of religious expression that we enjoy in this country. That if we don’t speak out against sin then we will hasten our destruction. That we must not “water down” the truth by blindly loving.
Excuse me, but that is shallow theology.
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment of all was, He did not say it was to speak against the evils of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Baptists.
He did not say to rail against homosexuals.
He did not say to boycott and picket forms of entertainment that run counter to our belief system.
He said to love. Love God. Love our neighbors.
The Christian life distilled down to two simple, yet profound, principles: Loving Him and loving others.
None of this is to say that we take a soft view on sin. However, it does mean that we take a softer view on people.
Seek to love first, before we cast judgment.
Seek to understand before we condemn.
Seek to embrace before we exclude.
“But we have to speak the TRUTH in love” people will say. That’s what Paul told us to do in Ephesians 4. We have to show these people where they are wrong, right?
How about we show them Jesus, instead?
How about we allow the love of Christ to penetrate their souls and change them?
If we are to speak Truth then we must know that Jesus is the Truth.
Same with love.
So our speech must be that of how Christ would speak to us. That changes how I proclaim the sinful state of fallen people.

We use that passage to justify falling on either extreme: bludgeoning
people with “truth” or coddling them with “love” rather than engaging
them with Jesus.
You see, Jesus was very explicit in His answer to what the greatest command truly is: to love. John echoes that throughout his epistle.
Because of His insistence of the importance of this, I would rather be guilty of loving too much than judging too much.
And if I truly love people then they will see Jesus in me. If I come along side them in their daily struggles embodying the love and mercy of Jesus to them, then they will want to know more about Him, right?
And when you come to know Jesus you are changed. And when you come to know Jesus you are no longer afraid to face the Judge.
Let each of us seek to be guilty of loving too much. For when we love as Jesus loved then the world will be changed. Debts will be forgiven, sins will be cleansed, and lives will be changed.
Jesus will be proclaimed and a profound theology will be espoused.
Yet, how to translate that into my own life is still so nebulous at this point. I do know this: I take the words of Jesus much more literally despite how hard they might be to live out. This is something that the church has failed miserably at. We are much more comfortable manipulating Jesus into our image rather than us submitting to His re-shaping us into His.
We typically shy away from many of his pronouncements to be peace-makers, to seek first the Kingdom, and to pick up our cross daily.
We preach humility while touting self-esteem.
We proclaim capitalism while preaching the need to give.
We talk about peace while advocating war.
And we wonder why people are confused.
We talk about love in the same breath that we will ridicule others.

In light of all this, let me make a couple of additional observations:
• When we talk about hitting the proper balance it must not be a balance between love and judgment. The balance is between loving God and loving our neighbors. Again we have to go back to the words of Jesus. He did not say “love your neighbors and judge them in the proper balance.” Instead, He said “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.” How that manifests itself becomes the driving point of our missiology.
• How we love God is determined by how we love others. That includes people we disagree with. That includes people that don’t get what I am trying to say. That includes people that are firmly ensconced within the realm of judgmental legalism even if they are, in our own subjective estimation, hypocrites. Let us not be dismissive or condescending to those who are not where we are.
• I do not believe that there is NO place for judgment or calling people to change their lives. There is right and wrong. There is sinful behavior detrimental to an obedient relationship with God. However, in the context of reaching out to those who do not have that relationship, our duty is to lovingly bring people into contact with the Judge, Jesus Christ. We are the conduits to which people find Christ, not the bouncer checking people’s worthiness to enter into His presence.
• We must provide space for people to search. Drawing our righteous lines in the sand does not accommodate the diligent and sincere souls who are trying to work out their own salvation. When we elevate some sins as more egregious and damning than others, we immediately erect barricades to those who struggle with those thorns. Who is closer to finding the Way? The son struggling with his sexuality or the father who has insulted, berated, dismissed and effectively barred his wandering child from his home?
• We must provide space for people to be wrong. This includes the more conservative for whom everything is cut and dry. This includes the permissive for which nothing is sinful. This includes me who may not be right about any of this.
• We must continue this conversation. We have so far to go to be the incarnation of Christ that the Lord has called us to be. Please continue to discuss this with me.
Let us love, love and then love some more. And when this life is past may it be said of us that we loved abundantly.
That we received sinners with open arms. That we injected the Spirit of Christ into all of our relationships, that we seasoned our speech with the hope of salvation, and that we embodied the hope of The Way that is Jesus Christ.
It’s what John tells us is essential to be distinguished from the false teachers out there?

Love is patient, love is blind
Never jealous, Love is kind
If my love is really true
Why can’t I be that way with you?
It’s easier said than done
Easy to talk that talk
How long will I run?
Till I walk that walk
It ought to be so easy to love someone
But it’s easier said than done (Darden Smith)

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