Correcting Love

Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

                                                                                                                            John 13:34-35

Loving someone in the ways Jesus commands is so much more than a feeling. Feelings can come and go when someone pleases us or does not. Sometimes Christ-like love is an act of will and self-discipline. It means reaching out, when I want to turn away, and seeing the other person’s possibilities, when it is much easier to see reject the current bad behavior.

If we love as God loves, our love is unconditional, but that doesn’t mean always supporting the other person’s actions, no matter what. Jesus loved the people of God, their scriptures and their worship. But he cleansed the Temple in a display of faithfulness to God and grief over what their worship had become. (John 2) Scripture offers us many images of God’s grief over our sin.

Sometimes out of love, we grieve painfully what another person is doing or becoming. And, though it is harder for us to see it, we sometimes grieve people who love us. Are we willing to let someone love us in the name of Christ enough to let that person correct us? Are we willing risk loving someone enough to call him or her back to being the person we know God made them to be?

Receiving or giving correcting love requires great humility. We can be wrong about ourselves or someone else. I have never once enjoyed being confronted about myself and my actions, even out of love, but I’m thankful for the people who have loved me enough to risk doing it.

God’s peace,

Katie