God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. (1 John 4:16-21)
In response to some religious leaders that had accused Jesus of driving out demons by the power of the prince of demons, Jesus replied that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
There is an insidious scheme of the devil by which he seeks to do precisely that: divide the household of faith so that it might not stand. He does this by causing us to avoid, fear, and imagine the worst of our siblings in Christ so that our love for one another might grow cold. This is the very thing Jesus warns against in his words on the end times in Matthew 24. Paul warns against it in 1 Corinthians 2:5-11 as well. Even 1 Samuel 18 tells this story, especially verses 12-16 where King Saul’s fear grows and consumes him with mistrust, while David increasingly lives in a different world marked by love.
The antidote to this sort of demonic division, is to receive the love of God who is love and to live this love of God very practically in our love for one another. Said differently: the antidote is to receive Jesus—the word of love in action—and become like him in that loving action. This is harder than it looks.
We will toss around little slogans like “just love” or “love instead of hate.” But very often when we do this, we are speaking of loving those that we find it easy to love—those we think that others should start loving just as much. Jesus’ form of love is something harder than that.
Jesus loved the sinners and the marginalized, yes, but Jesus also loved his enemies. Jesus loved a sinful humanity that conspired to kill him in the form of a Sanhedrin, Pilate, and soldiers, and he loved this sinful humanity embodied in these people that were killing him, even as they were killing him. The words on his lips were “Father, forgive.” Who of us have loved a friend to that point, let alone an enemy?
This work of love is beyond any of us, unless we are actively seeking to receive God’s own love for us to empower us to do it. Only in God’s love can we offer costly words of forgiveness even before an offender has repented. Only in God’s love can the impossible divides of fear and mistrust be overcome. And they must be overcome. “For whoever does not love their brother or sister” in the church “whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” “He has given us this command: anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” I am convinced this is the hardest command in the Bible, but also the most important—as the New Testament everywhere attests.
On our own, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. And we know it’s possible, because this is what Jesus has done for us. We love, because he first loved us.
If you’d like some additional wisdom on what love through forgiveness is and isn’t, check out this booklet “Forgiveness Fundamentals” from CRC media ministry, Family Fire.