We use the word easily and know something about it from our own experience. Surely, love is something we all want and want to give. And we would all agree about its importance: God is love which He proved for all time by giving His Son for our sins. We thus must practice love if we are to implement the gospel in our lives.
Yet we have difficulty wrapping words around love; we have difficulty expressing how to be transformed by it and we find love very hard to implement in our lives. Let’s face it, love is not an easy task, especially in a world that hurts regularly and, sometimes, deeply.
Occasions to forgive
On a daily basis, we are all faced with transgressions against us that create a struggle in our lives. Most of them are a consequence of a sinful person living with other sinful people. Yet there is a struggle in forgiving those who harm us. We may be believers, but we still have sinful hearts that rebel against God’s command to forgive, to turn the other cheek, to share our extra coat with an enemy.
We live in a self-oriented, take care-of-yourself generation. Love that is forgiving, however, does not just ignore the conduct of others; it involves the pursuit of the offender by the offended for the sake of restoring their relationships with God, themselves and with others. What passes as forgiveness may be little more than a self-destroying avoidance of the truth. True biblical forgiveness is a gift for both the offender and the offended.
Fulfilling the commands
Jesus silenced the well-versed Jews by summarizing the law in two commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…and love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31).
In like manner, Paul said, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14). And he urges the Romans to let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his brother has fulfilled the law. All the commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” Do not murder,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandments there may be are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Rom. 13:8-10).
Love is not only the summary of the law, it is also the measuring rod by which our lives will be judged. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples” (John 13:34-35).
Forgiving love
Forgiving someone who hurts us requires humility, insight and courage. We need the kind of humility that has a deep understanding of our own sins. We need insight to understand the condition of the other person and we need courage to see their potential.
A forgiving love involves feeding the other with the right kind of food. It would be cruel to offer a man dying of thirst a piece of thick bread without first satisfying his thirst. In many cases, love will unnerve, offend, hurt, disturb and compel the one who is loved to deal with the internal disease that is robbing them of joy. At first, and perhaps for a long time, the food we serve may not be appreciated. But Paul plainly states our task in Ephesians 4:29: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers.”
Truly helping another
Our task is to continually learn what it means to offer to the other person what they really need. Our love ought to draw others to a taste of life that satisfies like no other. Our strength ought to warn others that pursuit of a false god leads to emptiness. Feeding those who sin against us means giving them a taste of life that may foreshadow eternal things.
We will not stir a person’s hunger for truth unless we are tender; and we will not increase their desire for repentance if we are not strong. If we try to separate tenderness and strength, they individually become ineffective. Tenderness without strength is empty and sentimental. It will only invite weakness and dependence. Strength without tenderness is harsh and dictatorial. It commands fear and promotes distance.
The struggle to forgive
Forgiveness goes directly against our natural reactions. When hurt, we would strike out and revenge ourselves. In those times when we are stripped to our bare rage, we may fight with ourselves to truly seek from God the blessing of a forgiving heart.
We can have confidence, however, that He is faithful to give us what He knows we desire and to do so in a way most suitable to break the spirit of retaliation that boils within us.
Hopefully, knowing our own sins will open our hearts that we might extend to others the same forgiving love that God extends to us.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One