Love Isn't Always Nice.

The heart of Christianity is something more dynamic and dangerous than niceness – it’s love. Nice is such a boring and inoffensive word. It is hardly life-changing or something you can get excited about. You probably couldn’t get executed for it either.

Jesus embodied radical love and truth. Not everyone likes this, particularly those with a vested interest in a comfortable status quo that is based on hypocrisy and exclusion. Christ love confronts and challenges us; imposes demands and blesses us; has inconvenient limits while granting extreme freedoms. Niceness does none of these things. It lets us off the hook, demands no change and offers no opportunity to go from glory to glory. Christ's love accepts us, but also requires growth that conforms us to look and act like Him. The Love of Christ isn't always nice but it is always life changing. Jesus calls us into the fullness of life and truth. His presence renews our minds. Christ's love draws us out of our comfort zones of selfishness into eternal life and freedom. Yet this process is not always pleasant nor is it often easy. At times it can feel more like punishment or judgement than kindness.

It is the human condition to want someone to agree with us. To say grace is enough but that is not the whole truth of Jesus teachings or the example given by him or the other authors of the Bible. God's grace is enough for us to handle any situation that comes our way. The key in of this passage of Paul’s is that he is in a tough and challenging place. Grace is given because following the path of love isn't easy and cozy. The very heart of the gospel and salvation is that we need is someone to love us enough to disagree with us, confront us, challenge us and offer the better way, which is Christ.

I’ve often wished that God’s grace and love were all just about being nice and sympathetic. I’m not saying God isn’t those things, but he’s a lot more besides. He lets us go through considerable pain and trouble at times. He has our best interests at heart. He is committed to us becoming the full and free people we were always meant to be. He is growing His love and reality in us, and like an operation it sometimes it is painful and challenging. I think that what we see as punishment or judgement is often just the pain of liberation from what traps us. And perhaps, to bring about deep and lasting redemption God must be more than merely nice. Jesus obedience in laying down His life, being crucified, defeating the enemy, and raising from the grave was surely motivated by more than niceness. And surely wasted when we value it below the radical act of love it was. Such a shallow god would be no real God. Christ is radical in His love that promises to change us and He’s calls us to be like Him. Our love should be radical and like Christ, uncompromising.

#Love #God #Dicipleship #Christ #Jesus