I’ve been working on a little bit of writing; maybe it’ll be a book, maybe it won’t. But at the very least they will live as long-form blog posts. Below you’ll find a link to all other posts/chapters in this series/book. It’ll self-populate as I write and release them.
faith worth passing on
you are loved
Know this through and through: God loves you. God’s love for us is the very foundation of the Christian faith. Other concerns may come up in news headlines and people may argue about various doctrines and beliefs, but this truth must be our guide and standard.
God loves you.
All of you.
Yet, we struggle to embrace this truth. No matter how firm we are about our beliefs, there will come a time, if it hasn’t happened already, where we will doubt whether or not this is true of us.
Maybe that love is for them, but not for me.
How could God love me if these things have happened to me?
Christians say this all the time because they don’t know how messed up I am or what I’ve done.
They may not know you, but Jesus does. He knows everything about us! Even the parts we prefer to hide! But the beautiful truth of the Christian faith, recorded in the scriptures, and demonstrated in history is that God loves us, period. The very first story in the bible shows us God’s disposition toward us. He loves us and delights in us.
God’s unconditional and all-encompassing love drives and motivates the Christian life. The more we know and experience his love, the more that we become what Jesus desires us to be: a people of love. When we allow Jesus’ love to get to the very core of our being, slowly but surely, he transforms us and reorients our understanding of ourselves and others.
forgiveness and love
The Gospel of Luke records for us an episode of this kind of love at work. One day, Jesus visited the home of a Pharisee (someone that society generally considered righteous), and while he was there, a “woman of the city” (someone that society would have shunned) arrived. We find a record of their interaction in Luke 7:
One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and when he went into the Pharisee’s house he reclined to dine. And a woman in the city who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair, kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”1
The Pharisee’s assessment of the situation echoes what most of us believe in our hearts: no display of devotion could make up for past sinfulness; bad company corrupts good morals; the righteous and the wicked do not mix. But Jesus immediately receives her and comes to her defense. He responds sternly to this Pharisee:
Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “speak.” “A certain moneylender had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” But he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”2
Jesus’ love, forgiveness, and acceptance of this woman led her to the kind of righteousness that he desires: righteousness that overflows in generous love to others. She shows great love because she has experienced great love. In contrast, the Pharisee’s self-righteousness closed his heart to others — even to Jesus. While the Pharisee was preoccupied with keeping up appearances, the woman had nothing left to hide. The woman learned to accept all of herself because she knew that Jesus accepted all of her — even with her past — and loved her. The Pharisee did not experience the same love because parts of himself were cloaked behind his projected image of righteousness.
Sometimes we do not fully experience God’s love because we are not willing to be honest about ourselves. Somehow, most of us learn early on in life that our sense of belonging is dependent upon our adherence to certain social or cultural conventions. We learned to keep certain parts of ourselves hidden for fear that we’d lose the love and acceptance of others. We can grow so accustomed to this way of hiding that we forget those hidden parts of ourselves, yet they are always there. If we do not fully embrace all of ourselves, we will always live in fear that the unsavory parts of ourselves will be found out. The love of God calls us not to be strangers to ourselves. When we grow in knowledge of ourselves, we better understand and experience the boundless love of God.3 He loves us. All of us. His perfect love calls us to know ourselves and overcome our fear that parts of us are not worthy of love. His love calls us to know ourselves and others. This perfect love — the love we experience from Jesus — casts out fear.4
a new command
In the Gospel of John, we find the only instance where Jesus gives his disciples a new command: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”5 Most of us rightly understand the comparative nature of the word “as” in this command: We are to love one another in the same way that Jesus has loved us. But the Greek word6 also carries a causative sense, which could be rendered from or because: We love out of or because of the love he has shown us. This causative aspect is more explicit in the epistles that are commonly attributed to John: “We love because he first loved us.”7 It is not the command to love that is new, rather it is the source of that love: the love that Jesus demonstrated on the cross for us. On the cross Jesus showed us the extent of his love, and it is this love that enables us to love as he loves us. Yet, sometimes when we try to do good for others, we become discouraged because it seems like our attempts ultimately come to nothing; evil and selfishness seem to win out. We wonder why we should keep trying to do good at all. But in the Christian faith, Jesus’ cross cannot be separated from his resurrection. If it was just a cross, then the story ends there and we would be justified in asking why we should love at all. But when Jesus rose from the dead, he showed us that evil does not have the final word in our lives.
Jesus’ resurrection life is the foundation of our faith, giving us confidence to love others in the same way that Jesus loved his disciples. It is a costly love that we are called to emulate, but the ultimate fulfillment of this call to love is not up to us. If it were dependent on us, we’d be crushed — how could we even come close?! Rather we are called to move with Jesus in faith. Even when it seems like things aren’t going well, Christians believe that Jesus will ultimately restore everything to righteousness — we aren’t engaged in a futile effort.
The resurrection changed everything for followers of Jesus and the early church. The resurrection convinced the early church that they did not need to live like the world, concerned with self-preservation and power. They were freed to generously love and serve others — even their enemies; they cared for the sick and the poor at great risk to themselves. They knew Jesus’ way of life would have the last word. Death is defeated. That same conviction and trust in Jesus’ resurrection life gives us hope today.
In the same discourse where Jesus gave his disciples this new command to love out of his love, Jesus promised that he would bring them to be with him.8 He guides us through our lives. His Spirit works in us, transforming us into people of love. Followers of Jesus are engaged in a lifelong process of growing in love with the sure hope that Jesus would bring our love to completion.
the measure of all righteousness
When Jesus was challenged by the religious leaders on what makes a good life, he went straight to the heart of the matter: love. Jesus taught that all the Law and the Prophets hang on two commands: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”9 The phrase “the Law and the Prophets” is shorthand for all the teaching and instruction contained in the scriptures. Throughout its long history, the church has sought to define itself by all kinds of measures: martyrdom, empire, hierarchies of power, doctrinal orthodoxy, form and function of sacraments, sexual ethics, etc. But Jesus taught that every expression of faith must be measured against these two commandments. There is, and never will be, any aspect of the faith that will supersede these two commands.
As we seek to live out the Christian faith, we will undoubtedly come across situations where we will need to exercise wisdom and discernment. There isn’t always a clear path to righteousness; yet this measure of righteousness still remains. As Paul would counsel the early church, “The commandments… are summed up in this word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”10
- Luke 7:36-39 NRSVue ↩︎
- Luke 7:40-50 NRSVue ↩︎
- St. Augustine famously prayed, “Lord Jesus, let me know myself and know Thee” and John Calvin wrote in the first chapter of his Institutes, “Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God.” ↩︎
- 1 John 4:18 ↩︎
- John 13:34 NIV ↩︎
- καθὼς / kathōs is the conjunction used here rendered “as” in most English translations. ↩︎
- 1 John 4:19 NRSVue. emphasis mine. ↩︎
- John 14:3. ↩︎
- Matthew 22:34-40 NRSVue. But also Mark 12:28–34, Luke 10:25–28. ↩︎
- Romans 13:9-10 NRSVue. ↩︎
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