Last Sunday I gave an example of "cancel culture" where a college denied a young man entrance for things he had posted on social media a couple years before. In "cancel culture" humans focus on one shameful act and use it as fuel to cancel that person from their organization, social circle, family, etc.
Christians should never work this way.
A couple boundaries...
1. This doesn't mean we should put up with anything. Ephesians 3 suggests Christians should root themselves in love. But nowhere does God's love come without truth, accountability, and confrontation for wrongdoing.
2. God won't be mocked either. Yes, the love of Jesus sees through lots of sin and darkness. But let's not find ourselves guilty of sinning just so God's love will increase. That doesn't work either.
So, do the hard work. Anyone can love those most like them. Think of the person who frustrates you. Or irritates you. Or has left your church in an immature way. Or complains a lot. Or doesn't have the same social standing or values as you do. Or....do you get the point yet?
Biblical love simply doesn't find the most convenient target and rest there. If that were the case, Jesus wouldn't have traveled very far. Instead, God's love has a distant reach. It finds those seemingly too far from God. When real repentance happens, God's love knows no bounds.
The challenge for your Friday: does our love do the same?
Ephesians 3:14-19
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 4:1-2
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
In Christ,
Pastor Kevin