Christlike Love....Is it possible?

     When I first came to Christ many years ago, the idea of Christian love was massively confusing. The commands to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” and “do good to those who hate you” made no sense at all (Matt 5:44, Lk 6:27). I practiced just the opposite for twenty plus years and, honestly, this sounded like really dangerous and even bad advice.  I remember the first chance I had to put faith into action regarding forgiveness and how beautifully strange it felt. On the one hand, I was giving up my right to retaliate and win. On the other, I was gaining victory by choosing to love, relying on Christ to win for me. It was about as close to walking on water as I could imagine.

     Fast forward thirty years and I find myself in all kinds of situations that continue to challenge this call to love and forgiveness, especially when I receive mixed messages. Trying to understand what a person actually means and what his or her intentions are can be incredibly confusing. And it is tempting to focus on discernment, rather than love, so that I can guard my heart from further pain. I reason that if I can learn to discern well enough, I can avoid painful relationships altogether. But, this is not the call of Christ – to measure out love and forgiveness only to those I consider deserving or trustworthy while protecting myself from the others. His call is to love them regardless -- when they say what they mean and mean what they say, and when they do the exact opposite. Why? Because that’s what he did.

     The disciples said they loved Jesus, but they slept when he was preparing to die and continued sleeping in spite of his pleading that they pray. They denied him when faced with the choice of comfort or following him, and they tried to use him for position and power. They even tried to trick him into giving them more food. But none of this deterred Christ from showing them love. He could have easily left the boat rides, the mountainsides, the dusty roads, the Garden and the Cross with a well-documented and justified declaration that these people were not trustworthy and did not deserve His love. His case would have been clear cut, even among his family members, who refused to trust and follow him. Yet we see him blessing his enemies, refusing to retaliate, feeding those who were needy but did not see their need for him, healing many who were not thankful and leading those who were struggling to accept His divine position as their very creator.

     Jesus loved profoundly, extravagantly, sacrificially and wisely but not blindly. He knew the heart of man was deceptive. While he was committed to lavishly giving love, he never put his hope or trust in the return of it. His confidence was that the Father alone could give the faithful love that never fails, and only he as the God man could perfectly live it out by the Spirit’s power. His motivation to love those completely incapable of returning the same kind of love was never based on need or desire but on a heart that was already perfectly satisfied with by his Father’s love.

     Unlike Christ, we often enter relationships with certain expectations that others will love us in return -- that they’ll value us and treat us with the dignity and worth Christ has assigned to us as his image bearers. But we know this does not always happen. Instead, we often leave relationships battled and somewhat scarred. Those we trust sometimes betray us. The ones we sacrifice for sometimes show us the least grace. Those we defend at times attack us. Instead of trying to discern who is going to love us well, we can instead decide to love all those Jesus places in our lives with his love, refusing to be discouraged when they do not return the same, or even when they give us evil for the good we have offered them.

     Our ability and power to show this kind of love can only come from Christ. He not only set the perfect example to show us the way forward, but he has etched his truth on believers' hearts by the Word and the Spirit. We can look to him, the great author of our faith, and see that he did all this not for the immediate gratification of getting his needs met but for the joy set before him (Heb 12:2). He was able to scorn the shame of rejection, press past the broken promises and insults, and refuse to be discouraged by unbelief and the slander, not because he believed these responses would change but because he was on a divine mission to pour out the most downright, beautiful love mankind would ever know. His eyes were fixed on the prize of the mysterious cross, where sin and death were defeated by resurrection power and shame was eclipsed by honor and glory unimaginable.

     Christlike love relinquishes our right to be treated fairly, our demand to see immediate justice and our often obsessive longing to be loved in return. In exchange, we receive the promise that he is with us and will comfort us when our hearts are broken, that he will love us perfectly in the way we long for and that he will give us the grace, strength and wisdom we need to keep loving and giving, over and over and over again, until all anger and hurt and even death comes to a complete end. At that instant, all brokenness and pain from imperfect love will cease, and we’ll experience the incomprehensible fullness of the perfect love of our Father, forever (Eph 3:20).

Stop, Drop and Pray

“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Gen 4:7). When God spoke these words to Cain, His kind warning was unfortunately ignored. Instead, Cain yielded to the covetousness and envy in his heart and took the life of his own brother. As I consider the tragic outcome of his choice, I am all too aware of my own sin nature and the opportunity I have each day as a Christ follower — to listen to God’s Truth, trust and follow Him or do it my way and suffer.

It seems an easy choice up front. In fact, I don’t think any logical person if presented with this story and the options would choose to ignore God’s leading and walk in misery. But, interestingly, we do it every day. The Lord shows us that going to bed angry or with unforgivness in our heart will result in a root of bitterness (Eph 4:26), but we often ignore the warning and refuse to let go of the anger. He says that if we worship idols we’ll become like them and our hearts will be darkened (Ps 115:8), but we reason that He couldn’t be serious and continue to bow our hearts to money, people, pleasure and our own selves hoping for the best. He says that if we leave “jealousy and selfish ambition” in our hearts, our lives will be chaotic and filled with all kinds of evil (Jas 3:16), but we refuse to let go of what we want and disregard the warning.

Like Cain, “sin is crouching” at the door of our hearts and desires to have us. It’s only as we submit to God, resisting the enemy and choosing instead to walk in the Spirit, that we have victory (Jas 4:7). But how do we actually “do” this in the midst of hectic lives and not nearly enough time and space for reflection?

Stop

When we lived in Korea, we often exercised on the trails by the ocean and mountains nearby. It seemed I got a pebble in my shoe almost every time we walked, but I usually tried to ignore it to keep from stopping. I didn’t want to lose my momentum, but the pebble became so distracting that ignoring it became far more frustrating than the inconvenience of stopping for a few seconds to get it out. That’s the way it is with sin in our lives throughout the day. As soon as we notice that something is not right, that we’ve lost God’s peace or that we’re convicted of saying or doing something we know in our hearts is not pleasing to God, it’s time to stop. Delaying dealing with it only steals from what could otherwise be a joyful and peaceful day with the Lord.

Drop

Once we notice that our communion with God has been breached and we stop to acknowledge it, there’s the opportunity to either yield our hearts to Him in prayer or keep moving forward, maybe with excuses and even good intentions to deal with it later. This reminds me of when the girls were young and would start crying about a problem. Depending on how focused or busy I was, I was tempted to ignore it, which only made it worse and usually the tension escalated. If, on the other hand, I would stop and carefully consider what was happening, drop what I was doing and deal with the struggle it was much more quickly resolved.

Pray

The decision by faith to go before the Lord and ask Him to show us specifically what has happened to unsettle our hearts really doesn’t take much time and it frees us to keep a clear conscience. Not only that, the answer is guaranteed! He promises that when we ask for wisdom with sincere hearts, He’s not going to turn us away but will show us His truth (Jas 1:5-6). When He reveals what we’ve done or not done or how we’ve taken offense at another person’s action or inaction or allowed our emotions to rule us, we can acknowledge and repent of these sins and claim the cleansing blood of Jesus over us (1 Jn 1:6-8). As we strive in the Spirit’s power to keep a clear conscience before God and others, we not only experience inner peace but we are able to reflect Christ’s light and love, bearing fruit for his glory (John 15; Acts 24:16; Matt 5:14).

It Makes All the Difference
We may think that it doesn’t really matter if we leave sin in our hearts, but we see from Cain’s life that it made the difference between life and death. Not that we’ll have such a tragic ending, but each day we ignore God’s Spirit nudging us to listen, trust and follow Him, we become increasingly less spiritually sensitive and our relationship with the Father grows cold. This, in turn, impacts our relationships with others. As we grieve the Holy Spirit, we lose interest in reading the Word, praying and seeking God’s Kingdom and our hearts begin to chase after other idols to satisfy the longing only Christ was meant to fill (Eph 4:30). As our hearts become hardened, we cease living in joy and fellowship with the Father, which leads to many other sins (Rm 1:21-25).

The obvious conclusion is that Cain’s struggle is our struggle. And God’s warning to Him is the same one He gives to us. As His children, we have access into His presence at all times (Heb 4:16). Not only that, we’ve been given all that we need for life and godliness (2 Pet 1:3) along with His promise of forgiveness for all our sins --- past, present and future (Col 2:14). But we have to choose to walk in this truth to experience His love and freedom (1 Jn 1:7). It’s a choice we make throughout the day that can certainly seem cumbersome, but dealing with the sin that seeks to master us is by far the wiser choice than trying to ignore it. Like a pebble in our shoe, the sin and the Spirit’s conviction remain until we stop, yield our hearts and turn back to Him, confessing and forsaking those things that separate us from a life of loving fellowship with the One who loves us perfectly!