What Love Really Means

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." 

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

 (The following is an excerpt from the devotional "New Morning Mercies" by Paul David Tripp)

"There are an awful lot of things that we call love that don't really rise to the level of what love is and what love does. Being willing to tolerate things that are wrong in the eyes of God may create a comfortable surface peace, but it isn't what love does. Maintaining peace at any cost isn't love. Remaining silent when I should speak up isn't love. Asking you to tolerate whatever I do or say because you say you love me is a fundamental misunderstanding of what love is and what love does.

Real, biblical, self-sacrificing, God-honoring love never compromises what God says is right and true. Truth and love are inextricably bound together. Truth without love ceases to be truth because it gets bent and twisted by other human agendas. If love wants and works for what is best for you, then love is committed to being part of what God says is best in your life. So, I am committed to being God's tool for what He says is best in your life, even if that means we have to go through tense and difficult moments to get there. I think often we opt for silence, willingly avoiding issues and letting wrong things go on unchecked, not because we love the other person, but because we love ourselves and just don't want to go through the hassle of dealing with something that God says is clearly wrong.

I'm not talking about being self-righteous, judgmental, critical and condemning. No, I'm talking about choosing not to ignore wrong, but dealing with wrong with the same grace that you have been given by God. Grace never calls wrong right. [Because] if wrong were right, grace wouldn't be necessary. If sin weren't evil and wrong, Jesus would never have had to come.

Love doesn't turn its back on you because you are wrong. Love doesn't mock you. Love doesn't go passive and stay silent in the face of wrong. Love moves towards you because you are wrong and need to be rescued from you. God graces us with this kind of love so that we may be tools of this love in the lives of others."

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I've said this once before and I'll keep saying it until my Lord calls me home - Love isn't tolerance. The Father loved us enough to not leave us the way we once were. One of the prevailing lessons that the Lord is revealing to me about Himself is that He works as a Restrainer (2 Thessalonians 2:6-7). One of God's evidences of grace is that He restrains sin from totally overcoming the world, and restrains saved sinners from doing whatever they want. To the liberals, that may sound offensive, and I don't blame you - because even on our best days, we are creatures of autonomy. We live for self-sufficiency and crave self-pleasure. But when we view ourselves in light of God's holiness - wretched, depraved, and incapable of doing anything good, we see that holding us back is the most loving thing He could do for us. He does not let us go our own way and by the work of the Holy Spirit, changes our hearts that we may desire to do His will.

How then are we to love one another? The challenge we face today as Christians is that we want to stay upright and follow what Scripture says, but we wouldn't want to offend anyone. What ends up happening is we imply and apply these sort of "biblical principles" that were never found in the bible at all. We mistake God's grace and forgiveness as our free pass, and wave this little flag of "not judging anyone who sins differently than us" in front of other Christians who are only striving to truly live Christlike, but are seen as stiff theological bigots who are only filled with "head knowledge". What I learned this morning is something we all need to be reminded of: It was Grace that sent Jesus to the Cross to pay for sins. It was Mercy that we weren't the ones on it.

I'm sorry if this yet again offends someone. I'm sorry if this stings. Do know it stung me first. I have a long way to go in learning how to balance these things. But also know that all of these things come from a heart that deeply loves the Lord and loves His people. Of course I want unity. Of course. But I only want the kind of unity that draws people closer to Christ and that encourages one another to live like Him. Not some idea of Him that we conjured up in our heads. To live the life that He lived according to how He presented Himself in His own Word: humble. Gentle, but firm. Submissive to the Authority of the Father. Of Scripture. And that kind of life IS offensive. It's offensive because it's different. It's different because it's Holy. God never gave up His holiness or cast aside the truth in order to display His love. And neither should we.

(photo by Tim Challies)