There is funny terminology that Paul uses in a couple of his passages about salvation and the love of Christ--that some receive it or try to use it out of vanity. This is a tad bit confusing to me. How could someone use the love of Christ in such a negative way?
But walk with me in my mediocre wanderings over life and spirituality for a moment. I want to take this little idea of loving people out of judgment or out of redemption.
In the love of judgment, love is somehow jaded to a task. We are loved, we are called to love, and therefore we HAVE to love. It's like the idea of having to do something or getting to do something. Love will often become a task for us. The pieces of life where we interject our definition of love, combined with the true objective nature of love defined in Christ, can become the check-list that we perform to fulfill the love box of living a Christ centered life. Okay. I know blah, blah, pretty words. So example: I over heard a conversation where a young lady (we'll call her Talker) said the phrase: "I am only telling you this because I love you," to another young lady (we'll call her Listener) But the terminology that Talker used to lambaste this other girl would be a far cry to be called love. Now, no doubt the truth is that Talker probably did love this girl because of the nature of concern in this conversation. But she did it in such a way that if I were Listener, I would have crawled under a rock and died rather than be embraced by Talker. The coarse nature of the conversation felt a lot more like Talker was passing her judgment on Listener rather than love. Her love was check-list-like. (I know the thing I HAVE to do as a Christian friend is confront the junk in Listener's life.) A more apt phrase would have been, "I am only telling you this because I judge you." I think about how often things are done in love to pass judgment? How a Christian might speak to a fellow Christian who struggles with homosexuality, how a Christian can oppose abortion yet support the death sentence, how a Christian could justify not giving to the poor because of what they might do with the money...
I need to pause and say that most of what I write on this blog is from my heart...which usually means that it is something that I struggle with. I judge out of love way more than I should. I think of how often, when I was in the student ministry, I would pick apart the way another ministry was run. I really was doing it out of love for wanting this other youth program to be stronger and better, but I did it in such a way that said: "I do it better." Or how about the way I ignore a particular neighbor of mine and justify it because they talk way to long and slow...and I just don't have the time. Or how, knowing my own past, I could ever even think negatively about the character of someone who has fallen from grace. So even though some of my writing may sound like a finger pointing: know that it is written more like four fingers pointed back at me laughing at me in my foolish attempt at life.
BUT what abut loving by way of redemption. Isn't just the sound of that wonderful! I cannot imagine living without redemption. Loving redemption says the difficult things to friends, but says them with the Spirit of love that lives inside of those who call Heaven home. I think about a particular time in my life where by no means was I in the right frame of mind, life, or spirituality. The last thing I wanted was for someone to call me out, but a friend grabbed me and said--"Dammit Randy, I love you too much, and God loves you too much, and has such an amazing plan for your life. I am going to walk in this with you. I am going to be your help mate to redemption." What followed were lots of tears and hard words. I felt like I had be grabbed by the ears and shook like a paint can. But not one judgmental word came out of his mouth. And honestly he taught me what it is to love in redemption. He taught me what it meant when Romans says that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. It taught me that my life always needs to fall in line of redemption. I don't have to agree with this world, but I have to love in it because I was loved in it. I don't have to be tolerant to disgrace, but I have to love in the same way that redemption loved me. I can be in this world but not of it. I can strive to love always with the understanding of my own redemption to life. I can live as an ambassador of the love of Christ. I want to walk like a living embrace rather than a rap sheet.
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