LOVE BEYOND OUR LIMITS (February 11, 2022)

It’s easy to be gracious to the gracious—to those who recognize their fault and seek to make amends. It tasks our virtue less than third grade math might task a physicist.

 

But let the one who wounded us be hostile or impenitent—and we will struggle like an eight-year-old confronted with a theorem. Our greater “virtue” goes unrecognized by unrepentant sinners. We bite our lips to keep from saying what we know—that all the fault is theirs; that we were always right.

 

So Jesus challenges us with God’s much higher standard: “If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! . . . Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid” (Luke 6:32, 35).

 

And so we glimpse the heart of God, who in the chaos of our stubbornness still offers us forgiveness—wholeheartedly and kindly: “Yet God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins” (Rom 3:24).

 

Grace is God’s strange gift to us, and not a virtue we acquire by practice or devotion. His kindness brings about our kindness, and we forgive as we have been forgiven.

 

Receive His gift. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott