When Love Really Isn’t Love
There are a great number of religious bodies today which advertise themselves as loving bodies of believers. This is fantastic and the way Christ’s Church should be identified. In fact, Jesus told his disciples the following in John 13:35: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”. The Bible has much to say about love. A scan of I Corinthians 13 lists a great number of attributes of love including patience, kindness, a lack of arrogance, proper behavior, and a desire for others betterment. God is love (I John 4:8). Jesus is the image of his father (John 14:7). Jesus Body is the Church (Colossians 1:24). Consequently, to know the Church is to know true love.
Do you ignore wrong in the name of love?
When is love not really love? Consider the mother who loves her son so much she cannot discipline him. A lot of these children seem to be found at the grocery store. Little Johnnie wants this, wants that, wants the other. “Yes, Yes, Yes”, mother gives in every time except one. “No”. What is the reaction of little loved Johnnie? Plug the ears. Johnnie throws himself on the floor and starts screaming. Mom starts pleading and negotiating to get him to stop. “No” becomes “Yes”, all supposedly in the name of love. How about the mom and dad who buy their children booze so they won’t go out and drive drunk. Is that true love? Perhaps true love is when mom and dad let their teenager go out alone with the opposite sex, hormones racing. A large amount of folks have no problem with this. How many of these young people experience the hands and lips of another person all over them and won’t end up marrying that person? How would they like these moments videotaped and shown to their future spouse? Even worse, how many of these arrangements end up with unplanned pregnancies or worse yet abortions? Purity lost from the first touch, dreams shattered, potential murder, all because they were loved so much they weren’t chaperoned and potentially embarrassed by the presence of mom or dad. True love? How loving is it to offer the child the choice of whether or not to attend Church? Certainly with infinite teenage knowledge, the teenagers know what is best for their life. True Love or not?
Many churches today advertise themselves as a non-judgmental church. The Church will accept anyone regardless of their behaviors because they are loved. Homosexual? No problem. Pedophile? No problem. Lying to the government about your birth certificate? No problem. Cheating on your taxes? No problem. Whatever sin you are in, it’s alright, because you are loved. There is no question God loves all men as should the Church (Romans 8:35-39). However, God also commands all men everywhere to repent of their sins (Acts 17:30). When sinners don’t repent God doesn’t leave them, they leave God (Isaiah 59:1-2). Scripture establishes that Christians should not be a stumbling block for sin by enabling it (I Corinthians 8:10-13). Christians are not to fellowship with sin (James 4:4, I Corinthians 15:33). If Christians do not tell others of their sin so they can repent and be forgiven in Christ, then they too are guilty of sin (James 4:17). The Church is told to break fellowship with those who will not give up their sin (Romans 16:17, Ephesians 5:11). Is ignoring the commands of God true love (I John 5:2)? This is what must be done if many modern religious bodies are listened to today.
In I Corinthians 5, the Corinthian Church is faced with an individual who is having a sexual relationship with his father’s wife. This is clearly a case of adultery and a sin (Matthew 5:27-28, Galatians 5:19-21). Yet, the Church cared about these people. Maybe they had a number of relatives in the Church. Maybe the Church members had known these folks their whole lives. So out of love, they chose not to say or do anything about the sin that was occurring. What wonderful Christians they felt they were! Here an awful sin was occurring in their midst. It certainly had to be embarrassing and awful to someone (perhaps the father?). Yet, because there was so much love, the sin just kept on going with no objection. What a great example for the youth of the Church! How mighty these Corinthian Christians were!
Paul doesn’t seem to take the view that ignoring the sin was acceptable. In fact, he chastises the church for their arrogance about how great their love was. He establishes love does not ignore sin. He exhorts the Corinthians turn the sinner over to Satan as he would. In other words, turn the sinner out to the world and the lusts therein. They were to get rid of the wickedness. Gasp! What a harsh cruel thing. Feelings could get hurt. Hopefully, shame would result in such a situation as well (Jeremiah 6:15). It is far better to have shame instead of spiritual destruction (Matthew 10:28). Proper shame brings about Godly sorrow and repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10). The inspired Paul wrote the God breathed words of I Corinthians 13 concerning love. He also wrote the God breathed words of I Corinthians 5. What he saw happening in Corinth was not love, but sinfulness.
Sometimes men operate from their own state of logic. They base their decisions on their own wisdom. However, “the foolishness of God is wiser than men; the weakness of God is stronger than men”. Enabling a drug addict is not love. Enabling a sinner is not love. Giving a gun to a suicidal person is not love. Encouraging sin by a sinner is not love. True love has the other person’s best interests at heart. The calling of God is to purity and eternal life (Matthew 5:8). Consider the advertising of a loving Church. Does it call for adherence to the commands of God and express a concern for the soul of the individual? Is a loving attitude expressed with an offer of help to escape the sins of the world? This is true love. If the call is for the individual simply to stay as they are, then that is when love really isn’t love.
2 Peter 3:9 – The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.