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| South Haven, Michigan |
Today I am seeing how much I need to be preached to. Because I do not love like Christ loved. He had a pure heart of love; my heart is still being formed in love (Gal. 4:19).
I tend to react in judgment, rather than respond with compassion. I feel more for myself, rather than for others. I am asking God to rip this evil out of me.
Greg Boyd writes: “Most Christians tend to walk more in judgment than they do in unconditional love… In so doing, we are forsaking the most fundamental job description God gave us: to love others as he has loved us.” (Greg Boyd, Repenting of Religion, 98)
It is sobering to remember that He has loved us not because we were so ridiculously cute and lovable, but while we were against Him, while we were his enemies. Romans 5:10 says, "For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!"
How important is this? Paul wrote, "The whole law is summed up in a single commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other." (Gal. 5:14-15)
I think we are all "hard to love" people, from our subhuman point of view. We think we're not like those "other people." Our tendency to judge flourishes in the soil of forgetfulness. We have forgotten:
1) Who we were when Christ rescued us; and
2) that we are now on Jesus' rescue team, with love as our job description.
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