Charity part 5
Here's my thought for today, "Let all your things be done with charity" (1 Corinthians 16:14). Now let's track this. Charity is love in action. And Paul wants us to let everything we do be done with charity. Let everything we do BE charity! Remember that love doesn't HAVE a motivation, love IS the motivation. I'm convinced that Jesus did everything He did because He was moved with compassion and motivated by love. He didn't do anything unless He saw the Father do it. And He didn't say anything unless He heard the Father say it. Well, God is love, right? So Jesus didn't do anything unless He saw LOVE do it. He didn't say anything unless He heard LOVE say it. Which, to me, kind of goes against the universally accepted (in the church world at least) idea of, "hate the sin, love the sinner." If everything I'm doing is done with love... then where is there room for hate? And I know in Revelation 2:6 Jesus speaks of hating the deeds of the Nicolaitans. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's where we get the justification for "hating sin." But it seems to me like most of the time hating the sin feels a lot like hating the "sinner." ESPECIALLY to the ones who are doing something we don't approve of. Listen, condemnation won't ever get anybody to change. Telling someone they are wrong, or dirty, or bad is a good way to get them to reject what it is you're trying to say. Condemnation doesn't work. It can't. That's why there's no condemnation for those in Christ. For those who know Christ is in them. And--I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but I already know what the next Rant series is going to be so--when we start to see the Christ in EVERYBODY (even if they don't see it in themselves), then we can stop telling people what to do and start telling people who they are. Then we can truly begin to draw out of people what's inside them. I know that it's buried sometimes. Hard to find sometimes. But the deep calls out to the deep. God poured His Spirit out on ALL FLESH. He took abode, or dwelling, in ALL of us. The difference is that some people know this glorious truth and some people don't know it yet. That, to me, is what baptism is all about. It's about acknowledging what happened on the cross. Almost... activating it, if I can say it that way. Not about GETTING anything, but about RECEIVING what we've already been given. And the best way to show people what they've been given--what they already have--the best way to show people Jesus... is to love them. No matter who and no matter what. Every day in every way. We are living epistles. We are God's love letter to the world. People ARE going to read us, whether we want them to or not. So we're in a unique position to show them something different. Something better. A more excellent way. We can show them love. And not the kind of love that requires something FROM them. Love is not getting. Love is giving. We can show them the kind of love that overflows naturally out of us... in everything we do. I think if everybody would just do what they can do, with what they've got, where they're at... then the love of God (the love that IS God) would cover the earth like the water covers the sea!