Jesus says that we are to love one another, that this is the way we will be recognized as His followers. This command is very straightforward, and full of implication. With this in mind, we need to carry forward what we were commanded to do, “love one another just as Jesus loved us…”
Love is challenging, and it’s a challenging action, motivation, and even a challenging thought. Because if you start to really work that out, if you start to live and act as if you truly love people, then lots of things begin to change.
When I think of the things I love, I recognize that I am willing to sacrifice for those things. I sacrifice my time to spend more time with the people I love. I sacrifice my money to go to places I love. The things that I love, are the things that I am willing to put my time and effort and money towards.
What about people that I don’t know? What about strangers, or people behind me in line, my neighbors, my coworkers? How do I act in love towards these people? What do I sacrifice so that they can be shown love? How do I show love to these people around me?
What about people I disagree with… what about people who act or do something that is contrary to what I believe? If we are going to love everyone we come into contact with, that includes the people who are in stark contrast to what we believe and do…
And I think we try to weasel our way out of this. The more I have dwelt on it, the more the Spirit convicts me that I don’t sacrifice anything for these people. That I have done everything I could to avoid loving these people.
We add a distinction to the call to love people, and it shows that we haven’t understood what we are called to. We use a phrase that is… well, wrong, and we are wrong for saying it.
We go to people that we disagree with, or more likely than this, we go to the people that we are closest with and talk ABOUT the people we disagree with, and we take these people and pick apart everything we disagree on. We claim they’re foolish, we claim that they are ignorant, that they want something that is wrong, we make fun of the way they think, we abuse their name, and by extension the God in whose image they have been made.
We talk about these people, and we close our statements of abuse, with “I love them, but…"
"I love them, but…”
We have the audacity to take a sentence that should define everything about our interactions with each other, and add a caveat that we think lets us fulfill the ‘love each other’ command from God and still be hurtful in our words and actions.
‘I love you but…’
We stand in front of a living savior, with holes in his wrists and ankles from nails, blood over his face from a thorny vine that had been pressed into his head for every single person that was, is, and will be alive; and have the audacity to use a sentence “I love you, but” to the very people he died for.
I love you, but…
I look at my life, and the things that I don’t understand or disagree with and see where I have been saying ‘I love you, but’ to so many people around me.
And this is something I am going to change. I am going to stop adding qualifiers to the love that I show others, because Jesus didn’t say “I love you, but” to me.
Jesus came to me, when I was broken and unable to help myself, and said ‘I love you’. He reached down into the filth of sin and pulled me into his grace and his light with love. He loved me. He loved me and saved me. And he did it without saying “but”.
And I have taken that love he showed to me, and decided that it should only go to people who are like me.
After all, I love all people, but I can’t let my affiliation with you affect my image.
I love all people, but you live a different lifestyle than I do and I won’t be around you.
I love all people, but…
Love is more than a word, love is meant to drive us to show Jesus to every person we see, because Jesus loved us when we were worse than lost.
So then, my life must reflect being willing to put the good of the person in front of me in front of what I would rather do. That I would be willing to let them crucify me, trample me, and bury me. It means reaching out to people the way God did to me. He came to me in my worst state, and was courageous and gentle enough to show me that the life I was living was leading to destruction. He then faced that destruction for me.
We cannot allow, “I love you but” to remain in our lives.