Is it tolerance, or maybe it’s love?
Someone just posted on… ahem… a social networking site… about how they heard it preached that tolerance is the ultimate virtue, which of course prompts a discussion about what we should tolerate, how much, and isn’t God love? Here’s my reaction.
We can’t will ourselves to have agape love. That is the love of the Father overflowing out of our realization of how much HE loves ME! We love Him because He first loved us, and while we were still lost in sin, He gave His life for us. The man who had been tempted in every way as we are but never sinned, BECAME our sin. The man who never lost touch with his father had to become the embodiment of what his father could not even look upon. I’m sure Jesus wasn’t just thrilled about the physical suffering, but I think what was ripping his heart apart in the garden was that he would bear for us the embodiment of our sin, and his own father would not be able to look upon him. God would have to turn his back on His one and only beloved son, whom had never in history departed from His side (read John 1).
We will never be able to love others the way the Bible commands, until we love out of the overflow of our hearts the love He pours into us. I have been in “church” all my life, and knew there was more to Christianity than daily striving (and failing) to be better. I found what I knew had to be out there when God started sinking into my soul the reality, depth, height and breadth of His love for me. And what His love and adoption of me does for my identity. I Am what I Am has made ME(!) his child. Like a prince or princess, my identity is defined by who my Father is and who HE says I am. I am the light of the world, his ambassador to bring Heaven’s kingdom reality wherever I walk. Today, I realize that I am who I am because of what God has done for me and who He says I am, and no perception of me by man can change that reality.
When God thought me up before He ever began work on making the world, He made me with a piece of Himself, and because of the fall, when I was created I was created incomplete. I’m not JUST a messy stink of failure in sin without God adding onto who I am, I was just never meant to be born without that piece of Him in me. When I accept Christ as my Savior, and put Him in charge of my life (like me being in charge ever worked out real well), that piece I was created to have in me is in place, and I will walk out becoming the person God planned for me to be (from before He created time) the rest of my earthly life.
Jesus’ death on the cross took care of the sin issue, and his message while he was hanging on the cross was “Father, forgive them, because they don’t understand what they’re doing”. And I think everyone would agree that Jesus wasn’t just referring to the Roman soldiers or Jewish accusers. When we walk in the love overflowing us as Jesus did, when God directs our steps, Christians can stop debating over what sin is tolerable or not. Jesus died for every sin, whether murder or “white lie”, because it all separated us from receiving the love God wanted to give. There are no degrees of sin, just covered by the blood or not. And when we repent and walk away from sin, it is wiped away, forever. Satan has nothing to point to and tell God He should throw us in hell anymore.
How do we walk out this reality in a world that says those who don’t tolerate every kind of behavior are wrong? We realize that people are either rejecting love or desperately seeking out LOVE, and because God is love (is he not?), they are therefore seeking or rejecting Him (most unknowingly). Every sin is born out of fear of not being loved or not believing that you’re loved, but God’s perfect love casts out ALL fear. People should have a very definite reaction to Christ’s followers, they should either be drawn inexplicably toward us (because of God’s love in us), or they should be repulsed by us (because they fear what light and love will reveal of them). When we walk with that once-missing piece inside of us, we should be able to see what people would be with their missing piece in place, too. It is God’s will that not one would perish, but have everlasting life, God’s chosen are every human being he planned to give life. We are ALL his elect, and that is why Satan hates us so very much and wants to make sure that doesn’t happen. God created us to be like Him (in His image), which is what Lucifer tried to become all on his own.
Jesus loved the lost out of their sin, and grew angry at those who were given the way but perverted it and led people into being lost. “Be on fire for me or hate me,” he says, “I can work with that, but don’t stand in the middle with one foot on the path of the way while pointing people straight toward hell with your mouth. That, I cannot and will not abide. Sin is no longer the issue, my death payed for it, and my resurrection obliterated its hold over you. I will ever call you higher above the fear I freed you from, and you don’t ever have to go back. You are free!” he shouts from the mountaintops. “Now, go tell everyone else.”
