RADICAL LOVE

What is love in the economy of faith? Is it some notion as weak and mollycoddled as thin tea? The love of man is fickle and prone to burn hot one moment and lukewarm the next. But the love of God is a constant, blinding and all-consuming fire. And this fiery fury births a radical love. He not only encourages it but commands any man or woman who lays claims to being His disciple to live in it.

And what is radical love? It is a love wholly opposite of our own base and flimsy notions of sentimentality and short-sighted feelings. Men’s love is temperamental, it bases value on whether it has been offended or not. To embrace radical love is to do away with enmity and judgement, greed and misplaced piety and to cast these things in the trash heap. It is not seeking the first for yourself but to look on all men and women with mercy, compassion and the desire for their wellbeing.

It is giving to the one who asks of you in their times of need. To love your neighbor as yourself. And to love your enemy. It is to set aside murder, not with knife or gun but murder done to others within the unseen rooms of our hearts. In the quiet places of our thought life where none but Him sees. It is a love that does not judge haughtily or recklessly. It has no room for spreading half-truths, lies or slander. Radical love takes no pleasure in misfortune but it reaches out to comfort and help even when those hurting are not like us. Radical love is going against the selfish and insulated notions of our own tribes and clans. Radical love calls us to see every single human life on this planet, be it in this country, Europe, Asia or the whole of the Americas as valuable and precious because He has deemed it so. And each person is an image bearer of Him. Genesis 1:26

Radical love not only comforts but rises and seeks out the welfare, justice and dignity of His image bearers. It does not demean and ridicule them, it doesn’t mock, it doesn’t create division or threaten retribution of its enemies. It doesn’t isolate itself or shun. Radical love does not put its weight or value upon the political but sees beyond that, it places its value solely on Christ’s work on the earth. It doesn’t skew left nor right. It always seeks out justice and mercy, even when these notions are unpopular or chided as weakness.

Radical love should be the hallmark vision of Christian community, where none are left out and where the health of the body united matters more than one’s own and should one hurt the whole hurts. And yet, we live in a reality that questions whether radical love, justice and our generosity should be a matter of state or our hearts. Radical love presses us to go outside the comfort of our own walls and to break bread with others not like ourselves. It does not set up fenced in outposts to touch the world and then retreat into our own safety and our little communities when we feel our jobs are done. It does not bear in the Us against Them mindset. We can give to all the programs we see as noble and just but if our hearts cannot grasp this radical love in the dirt and pain of everyday life, then we are just clamoring cymbals, a weak timbral drowned out by the howl of the wind. Radical love is His heart. It is found all throughout the ancient texts and made dominant on the Sermon on the Mount. It is to be in truth, to love mercifully. Just as you were loved. It calls for radical allegiance not to the things of men but only to Him. The kingdom of men seeks to install morality and false piety and virtue. We are to be of a different breed.

“A new commandment I give you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” John 13:34

This is not only to those of us like minded, but to all men, women and children. Love. Over enmity. Over tribalism. Over who we say is right and who we declare wrong. It rejects justification of separation and exclusivity. It loves mercy. Be about such things as His image bearers and disciples on this good day.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciple, if you love one another.” John 13:35 Love well.