It will be hard

Thank you to those who are still with me. I had not expected these thoughts on love to take the direction they have, and I apologize now for the sermonizing. It has been an interesting, sometimes difficult journey, and I have learned so much.

I was until recently someone who liked the notion that because I accepted Jesus I was a saint. Often tarnished, but still a saint. I think now that was wrong. If we are to be people of love we must first understand deep down the extent to which God loves us in spite of what we are. We will need to understand grace, embrace it, and live a grace life. We know that grace is God’s free gift to a world of sinners, motivated by His love. But do we really get it? It was while we were sinners that Christ died for us. There was nothing intrinsically lovely about us, yet God loved us. Now that is Amazing Grace. But there is even more, because what's more amazing is that God keeps on loving sinners. This is the full wonder of grace, that even though we continue to sin, God continues to love us and bless us with grace, choosing to see us as forgiven. It is an awesome thing; Jesus loves sinners, and we qualify! Even now. Especially now! We can admit our failings, be open and honest about our sin, and rejoice!

Failing to live in the light of ongoing grace has, I think, been my failure to now. Perhaps it has been yours too. We “foolish Galatians” lose sight of continuing grace. We live our lives expecting improvement as a result of our self-denial and self-discipline. Eventually however, we become disappointed with our weakness and infidelity, and in the end we “are overcome by the ordinariness of our lives”. Then we begin to live like the world, or at least like everybody else. Afraid to admit our failure we construct our elaborate religious disguises to hide our true, needy selves. But we know inside ourselves that we are not holy, except if we compare ourselves to others, and so we do just that, excluding and vilifying those who we decide are greater sinners than we are. The horrible result is that we neither accept God’s ongoing grace, nor do we offer it. And the world sees right through our pretend-lives and our pretend-love.


The result is to badly represent our God who is love, who pours out His love on all mankind, without limits, who "so loved the world that He gave His son…” Many reject the grace that is offered them, but that does not diminish God’s character, or His continuing love for sinners. He loves Muslims, prostitutes, atheists, the self-righteous, the unrighteous, the abortionist and the right-to-lifer, the liberal and the conservative. I mean he really loves them. He “agape” loves them. And so must we.

The apostle Paul knew this. He knew the grace that saved him and the grace that kept him. He wore no disguises to hide his faults. “Oh wretched man that I am, who can save me…?” And having received God’s grace, he realized that his mission was to be a steward of grace, and so he prayed for the Ephesians that they would know love (in all His fullness).

We need to know love in its fullest sense. Not to be loving, but that we would take on the character of love. You see love is not an attitude, an expression, a feeling or a quality. Read 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a again! Love is who we are to be in the kingdom of God! If not, our words will not be heard as truth, our knowledge and faith will not impress, and our works will be rejected.

Understanding God’s grace will change who I am; who we are. We can drop our masks, admit our need, allow God’s grace to increase all the more and begin to let our love abound. And when this happens, love will underpin everything we do. Our church will change. It will be a “hospital for sinners” where the poor and the wretched, (a group to which we belong), will be welcomed and loved. Our discourse with the unbelieving world will change. We will disagree with those who don’t understand our God, but we will not be disagreeable. We will be like Stephen – “full of grace and the Holy Spirit”. Our lives will be beautiful. We will enrich others just with our presence.

This sounds lovely , a little romantic even. Today we're all going to start loving like Jesus. Let me put an end to that. Remember Peter. Change will be harder than we can imagine, and again, more than ever, we will need God's abundant grace. Getting rid of our disguises will be hard enough. Loving as Jesus loves will be mindblowingly hard and the flesh will not get us there. It is all Spirit.

Two days ago, as I travelled downtown on the bus, a young man sat down on a seat nearby – wearing make-up, lipstick, earrings, a ladies haircut and a ladies jacket with a fake fur collar. I felt revulsion. Yesterday, as I rode a crowded bus, two young men got on and took over the seat in front of me. They smelled. One in particular was loud and crude, dressed and looking something like a skinhead, but mostly he was an unwashed bum. Three times during the 15 minute trip, “skinhead” cleared his throat so all could hear, and spat on the low divider separating his seat from the exit. I felt hatred. Then today I went to an art gallery. Unknown to me, one exhibit was a film in which “gays” and others spoke about an art project connected to the spread of Aids in North America. I felt contempt. And so I said on behalf of us all, “Lord, how can I tolerate people like these, let alone love them and serve them”. And Jesus said in response: “You must love them. I came for them. They are like you were, although you didn’t perhaps realize it at the time. They are lost and lonely and dying. Feed these sheep of mine.” And He slipped his arm around my shoulders.