by Pastor John Kim
The theme for Lighthouse Bible Church Los Angeles is “Love Them Like Jesus.” I explained that I used the same theme back in San Diego and while I tried to find a different way to phrase it, I just kept coming back to the song by Casting Crowns that painted a very vivid picture in my mind when I first heard it. We are surrounded by lost and hurting people who walk through the doors of the church and often times we have no idea just how much pain and suffering they have gone through. As ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven, the church has the great responsibility and task to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is an urgent matter, one that we cannot afford to be lax about since there are men and women dying every day and their eternal destiny is at stake.
I know and understand that the gospel must be preached. This is a non-negotiable issue that is something we must never compromise. But if there is one thing that really creates a complication, it is when the very lips of those who claim to represent Christ are attached to a person who contradicts the very gospel message with the absence of the love of Christ.
“For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” (2 Corinthians 5:14–15)
If the love of Christ truly controls us, we are to no longer live for ourselves but for Him who died and rose again on our behalf. If we have even the slightest idea of the grace and mercy that has been shown to us at the cross and that we have been overwhelmingly loved with a love that cannot be separated from us (Romans 8:39), the question really does beg to be asked, “How can one who knows the love of Christ not only fail to manifest the love of Christ in the way that Christ has loved, but even go as far as to demean that love by belittling or ignoring the multiple times where Christians are commanded, not just suggested or advised, but given the imperative that is meant to be obeyed to the glory of God and to magnify the grace that has been shown through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?
When Jesus confronts the church of Ephesus is Revelation 2, He confronts a church that is doctrinally sound, that is hard-working, and persevering in the midst of tribulations. But there is the one thing that He has against them, that they have left their first love. The church had departed from or abandoned their first love. There is no particular aspect highlighted here. It is everything to do with what God intended for love to be in the life of the church. Love for God, love for Christ, love for the Holy Spirit, for the church, for the lost – all of it was left behind. How could this be? How could those who actually have the very thing that the world longs for, true love, be willing to divorce themselves from that which would grieve the Lord Jesus Christ to the extent where He would condemn a church?
1 Corinthians 13 gives us a pretty good clue in that the apostle Paul confronts the Corinthian church, amongst many things, that they have failed to love one another with the love of Christ. They have turned the church into a chaotic whirlwind of selfishness, self-promotion, divisions, tolerance for sin, and at the heart of it, in the midst of what was to be the beauty of exercising their spiritual gifts for the edification of the body, they are vying for power, judging one another, and comparing against one another instead. This all completely failed to represent what the church was meant to be and do.
Jesus told His disciples in no uncertain terms in John 13:34-35 to love one another just as He had loved them.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34–35)
We are called to love one another as Christ has loved us.
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” (Ephesians 5:1–2)
What is amazing to me and often leaves me completely flabbergasted is the blatant disregard, hard-hearted contempt, and absolute deliberate choice to treat others with a complete absence of grace and mercy and yet at the same time claim to desire someone’s spiritual growth. Yes, there is no one who perfectly matches up to the standard of Christ and we all, including myself, need to be corrected, admonished, and exhorted along the way. But if there is one thing that I continue to grow in my understanding, it is that the love of Christ controlling me and compelling me and constraining me cannot help but reveal itself especially in times where you deal with the pain of conflicts, the unfairness of judgments, and the unwillingness to seek peace by those who claim to be Christians. It is in the crucible of suffering that we find whether the love of Christ is truly at the heart of why we live. So we can be grateful and thankful that the times of suffering and trial give us opportunity to cling to the love of Christ as well as to display the love of Christ to those who would treat you like an enemy. Did not Christ call us to love our enemies?
Yet I can tell you that over the years I have grown to understand a little bit better what Paul meant when he wrote to the Philippian church these words:
“For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.” (Philippians 3:18–19)
The tears of grief and overwhelming sadness have been experienced many times because to fail to live in light of the love of Christ has lead some to the point where they actually become enemies of the cross of Christ. Paul’s heart broke, I’m sure, as the faces of those he once had fellowship with turned not only against him but against Christ and it caused him to weep.
Does your heart break, especially for those who claim to know Christ but contradict everything that Christ stands for in their refusal to love the way He loved? This has been my greatest struggle – to love those who are unloving. I can honestly say that God has allowed me to love the unlovely, the unlovable, and those who have never experienced love. It is because we all share common ground – we all know what it means to be unloved but now because of Christ, we are loved beyond comprehension. But those who purposefully, deliberately, and often times heartlessly display a harsh spirit, a judgmental spirit, a condemning spirit, a merciless spirit, a spirit that denigrates grace and spits on mercy, a spirit that measures others with a pharisaical hypocrisy that reveals their callousness of their own hearts, a spirit that is so self-righteous and arrogant that produces such a stench of putrid hate that it is no surprise that many turn away and are disgusted with such obscenity that claims the name of Christ. And yet, our Savior, when dealing with the very ones who plotted and ultimately called for Him to be crucified, was still patient and persevering, even to the point of death, death on a cross, for the very ones who even called for His death!
If Jesus could still love those who hated Him, if Jesus could still show mercy to the thief on the cross who only minutes before was cursing him but then begged for mercy, if Jesus could cry out to the Father, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do!”, if Jesus could for the joy set before Him endure the cross and despise the shame, if Jesus could love us like this, then I think we know that the way we are called to love all too often falls short of the love with which we have been loved. So will you love them like Jesus? Will you carry them to Him? Maybe instead of trying to give your answers to everyone’s problems, will you instead stand by their side and weep with them? Will you show a love that is patient, kind, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things?
My heart is so burdened with the lack of love by those who claim to be Christians that it really at times can be so disheartening. But as I have been recently reminded through reading Alexander Strauch’s books Love or Die and Leading with Love, I can only hope and pray the prayer that Paul prays in Ephesians 3:
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:14–21)
May the Lighthouse churches know the love of Christ, be controlled by the love of Christ, and proclaim the love of Christ both in word and deed to His glory.