Jesus made it clear that the defining characteristic of His disciples would be the way they loved others. Inspired by Jesus’ words we get down to business and start combing the neighborhood for people to love. We pull out our checklist and begin our agape Christian marketing scheme: Family -check; friends – check; church – check. We then bring our completed list to Jesus in prayer and await our reward but sadly find Him disappointed. What could we have possibly missed? We then ask for a bit of a clarification on the neighbor thing and Jesus drops a bombshell; our neighbors will be the ones who are most unlovable. As it turns out, we don’t get to vet the objects of our affection and our sincere attempts at loving others may go unrequited. Ouch!

We readjust our attitude and accept the fact that this may be harder than we thought. We plow ahead and offer unconditional love to our enemies and those indifferent to our efforts. We get our feelings hurt along the way but are proud that we followed Jesus’ advice. We once again enter into prayer hoping for a pat on the back and a “well done good and faithful servant,” but once again Jesus is unimpressed. He takes hold of our hand and we startle at the feel of His scarred palm. He looks us in the eye and asks, “Did you love sacrificially?” We look down at our well-manicured hands, shuffle our feet, and quietly answer, “No, we only loved conveniently.” Jesus continues, “You are my Body in this world; how will they ever know Me if you don’t love like I do?”

Our Christian love cannot consist of just giving bread instead of stones, and fish instead of serpents to our friends and family because then it is indistinguishable from the way the world loves. God’s love rains sacrificially down on the just and the unjust so when we selectively love others we unwittingly impose drought conditions on those at greatest risk of dying of thirst.

God existed in a perfect Trinitarian relationship yet offered no greater love by sacrificially cutting out a piece of His Sacred Heart and incarnationally pouring His life giving blood on all mankind. If God chose to bleed to death on our behalf, the least we can do is donate a pint of life giving love to those perishing from spiritual anemia. If we love our enemies sacrificially then the world will have no choice but to see that we are His disciples.

Our love should be salt and light to the world so lets stop making our salvation product low sodium and remove the PC dimmer switch from our light on a hill. We need to start loving in a way that makes the world a bit spicier and allows the Light of the world to shine even brighter. So when people see the way we love they should ask us, “Does Jesus love me?” We can then confidently say, “He loves you to death for the Bible tells me so.”

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13: 34-35)

Photo by Leighann Renee on Unsplash