Jesus was the most loving person to ever walk the Earth. One of the most famous scriptures is in Matthew 16 when Jesus says actually that the 2nd greatest command is to love thy neighbor. It is essential as followers of Christ to love thy neighbor…in fact, one of my favorite things is how the Apostle, Paul writes in Galatians that the first fruit of the Spirit is love. It is impossible to follow Christ without loving people, I love what 1st Corinthians 13 1-3 says “If I speak in the tongues of men or angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but does not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Jesus was the greatest example of love because He loved us so much He died for us on the cross because God doesn’t want to be separated from us, but love cannot be used as an excuse to affirm sin as it says later in 1st Corinthians 13, " Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres."
We must love thy neighbor, but we cannot let love blind us from sin. When we change the Gospel to affirm someone’s lifestyle it does nothing good for us, the church, or the people we love. Paul writes in Galatians 1:8-10, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one, we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” We cannot change the Word for the world. Ultimately, we are all going to face God on judgment day, and the wages of sin are death (Romans 6). Sin also needs to be called out in the church so that we may grow, and glorify God as we are created to, as it says in Ephesians 4:12-15 "so that the body of Christmay be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ"
An essential lesson we must learn as well as we must learn that there is a difference between acceptance and approval. We can accept and love someone, but not approve of how they live their life. Example: Say someone gives you a gift for your birthday, you can accept it, but that doesn't mean you approve of it, it is the same way with sin. You can love someone, and you can love someone unconditionally, but that does not mean you approve of their choices. Something I have learned is that true love is to preach the truth. We see throughout the Bible God being a just God because He loves His people, and He wants them to be the best they can be because He knows best. It is the same way with us, we need to correct our brothers and sisters and lead them away from their sins.
The question arises, how do we do it? How do we share the Gospel compassionately and be unapologetic? And that is by love and we learn that example of love from Jesus (Jesus washed Judas feet, knowing he would betray Him) and telling people how much God loves them and that before we were even formed in our mother's wombs He had our days planned. Romans 2 says it is the goodness and love of God that leads us to repentance, and that is what we must show. We must love unconditionally, yet make sure we are not affirming sin. That can look like a variety of things: listening to our friends about sin, praying for them, serving them, being patient with them, supporting them and rooting them on, do not make a person’s sin their identity (see them as people, not sin) and most of all, make sure they know Jesus loves them no matter what. These can be difficult things but when you ask the Holy Spirit to come work within you and help you, He surely will because the Lord is so kind to help us because His word says in John 14 that anything that is asked according to His will for His glory, He will grant you it! I hope this blesses and helps whoever is reading, many blessings,
Barrett Colerick
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