Will the Real Love of Jesus Stand Up

What kind of love sees clearly the treachery and sin of humanity, and in the face of such rebellion, ungratefulness, and horror exhibits a love that not only offers forgiveness, but in fact becomes the very sin that is so repulsive and deadly? And we as believers know what it means to receive such redemptive love, but do we know what it is to give it to others? We so glibly say the word “love” and we so easily understand it in the context of human love. But what does divine love look like when exhibited by a believer to an unbeliever?

Many, if not most, believers are wary of compromise and we have become accomplished at condemning and very inexperienced at redemption, except in the doctrinal sense. We are able to explain the rudimentary issues of redemption with the precision of a physicist explaining an abstract equation, but when it comes to manifesting the love that is that redemption in a human and practical sense we are not only clueless, but that issue has been mostly ignored and therefore is almost extinct. I would draw your attention to this issue and ask you to meditate on my poor words, but more importantly consider how we as believing followers of Jesus Christ should walk out the redemption we have so freely been given.

To be completely honest, this post is in response to the suicide of a student at Rutgers University who was surreptitiously recorded having some sort of gay relations with another man by his own roommate. And anyone who has read my blog for any amount of time know how much I abhor the hatred and self righteousness so often exhibited by the church, and especially in the area of gay sinners (as opposed to heterosexual sinners). There is nothing so repugnant and so at odds with the Person of Jesus than the viciousness and abject condemnation of sinners. For many, many years the church of Jesus Christ has taken pride in its stand against homosexuality and it practice, and especially the suggestion of gay marriage. And in its effort to exhibit doctrinal purity much of the church has relinquished any hint of redemption and demanded that gay sinners cease that brand of sin before they are candidates for the redemption found in Jesus Christ.

And inadvertently, for the most part, we have built a fortress around the cross and made it a religious relic and attractive jewelry rather than living it, dripping with crimson love, in a dark world of all kinds of sin and horror. God forbid we as believers get dirty by being seen as “soft” on sin because we “rub shoulders” with gay people and love their souls more than reject their particular brand of sin. God’s love crosses all sorts of sin barriers and reaches out in grace and redemption and offers…well…offers Jesus. And if your doctrinal reputation is important to you then make sure that your fellow believers know you do not approve of sin, including the poster boy called homosexuality. Of course, it is interesting to note, that for every New Testament reference concerning homosexuality there are ten verses that deal with avarice and money sins. But hey, who’s counting?

If we as believing followers of Jesus Christ ever really desired to know and emulate the redemptive love of Jesus Christ, we just might be used of God to impact millions of sinners who at this moment are alienated from the community of faith. But that kind of redemptive intrusion would require a humility that both admitted a profound lack of knowledge about the real Jesus, as well as completely ignoring the expected backlash of condemnation and judgment that would surely come from within the community of faith itself. And of course there are activities to accomplish, church mortgages to pay, staff payrolls to meet, and membership rolls to pad. And somewhere in a dimly lit room another gay person is befriended by loneliness, shame, and depression. And like the old woman who swallowed a fly…perhaps he’ll die.

Jesus loves him.