We know that love must abound. Look at what Jesus told us in John 15:12-13:
12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
And Jesus demonstrated that love by laying down His life for us. Jesus willingly went to the cross of Calvary on our behalf. He took our punishment upon Himself. Did He wait to do that until after we cleaned up our life and came to worship Him? NO!
Romans 5:6-10 teaches that:
6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. 10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
We are supposed to love other people like that too – even our enemies. We love people in spite of their foibles and weaknesses, but with discernment and knowledge.
People are out to skin the church all the time. They show up with their sob stories that would just tear the heart out of you to listen to them. And they ask for money. Many of them are con-artists. It takes discernment to know.
It’s a terrible thing to waste God’s money by giving it to a con artist, or a drunk, or drug addict so they can get another drink or hit. Nor should we give money to someone simply too lazy to work. Christian charity is a great virtue, but being taken isn’t.
Let’s look at it from a different angle. If love should be with knowledge and discernment. And if that knowledge is knowledge of the Word of God, true love would never cause another person to sin.
So that boy claiming he loves you in the back seat of the car, but expecting you to put out and compromise your virtue and sin with him, he isn’t demonstrating love, but lust. It is not true, Biblical love. Knowledge and discernment would recognize that. It would cause you to flee from that car. It would cause you to keep out of those situations.
Likewise, true love would never whitewash over sin, as the liberal church does. If, for instance, the Bible says that homosexuals will not “inherit the kingdom of heaven,” as it does in 1st Corinthians 6:9-10, and we don’t warn them, we are not loving them. Our deference to their feelings, or our attempt to be politically correct, is hatred, not love. True love would tell them the truth,
Before we leave this, however, just one more thing about loving with “knowledge and discernment.” Yes, we are to love the unlovely, but that doesn’t mean, as J. Vernon McGee says, “we just let our love slop over on every side.” We love with “knowledge and discernment.” There are a lot of people out there spreading damnable heresies, and Jesus, the very one who told us to love our enemies, had nothing but scorn and contempt for those false teachers.
In John 8:44 Jesus told the false religious leaders of his day who were teaching lies:
44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.
In Matthew 23:13-36 Jesus repeatedly said to them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.” He dressed them down good, calling them every name under the sun. He called them blind guides, fools and blind, white-washed tombs full of dead men’s bones. He called them serpents, and a brood of vipers. He told them they murdered the prophets and were going to hell. And, by the way, Jesus never sinned you know, so it wasn’t wrong for Him to say it. It was all the truth. He was right in what He said, and He said it as the God of love.
Jesus would never fit into the sappy sentimentalism that has invaded so much of the modern church - a sentimentalism that tolerates just about any sin, any heresy, and any behavior - calling that tolerance love and humility. Jesus has called us to battle. The battle is against Satan and against error
According to 2nd Corinthians 10:4-5, we are supposed to be “pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.”
We aren’t supposed to be sweet and kind to them? We aren’t supposed to say, “Well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.” Hogwash! That’s not God honoring. That’s just plain appeasement. That’s wimping out like a coward. We’re supposed to shred their arguments. We’re supposed to smash their fallacies like boys smash Lego towers until nothing is left standing.
In 2nd John 7-10, John, the apostle of love, talks about how to treat false teachers coming to your door. He writes:
7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. 8 Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward. 9 Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; 11 for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.
The mark of a deceiver is that they get the Jesus question wrong. They mess up, “Who is Jesus?” To them, we’re not supposed to offer hospitality. We’re not even supposed to greet them because if we do, if we provide any help or encouragement, we are sharing in their evil ministry that leads people to hell. True love is more concerned with the spiritual well-being of that other person than whether or not we offend them with the truth.
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