Loving “Non-Believers” with the Love of God
Loving others seems simple: be kind, treat others like you would like to be treated, and forgive others of their wrongs. But loving people, particularly in the ways God loves us, can be difficult. While many factors can make loving others difficult, I want to focus on loving those outside of God’s family: the unchurched, the deconstructionists, the non-believers, or whatever name you call these folks who have not yet trusted (or no longer trust) in Christ.
When Jesus walked this earth, God’s people did not categorize others specifically as “saved or unsaved,” but, oh, was the concept present. John 9 introduces a Jewish man who was blind from birth. The disciples ask Jesus who sinned, the man or his parents. There it is: the us and them, the sinners and the non-sinners. An incredible amount of judgment is wrapped up in the disciples’ question. Christ, full of love, lets the disciples know that no person’s sin caused the blindness but that the man was born this way to bring about God’s glory. Then Jesus makes a healing mud with dirt and his saliva, rubs it on the man’s eyes, and heals his sight. The rest of the chapter documents the continual judgment of the man and Jesus.
When we minister to those “outside of the church,” how often do we take the same stance as the disciples? How often do we view others as sinners, people to be saved, and, dare I say, projects to be completed? When engaging with people outside the church, we can often focus on the visible sin rather than the person. Like the disciples, we forget to see people the way God sees them. In John 9, Jesus does not see the man as one to be pitied or someone to fix. Jesus approaches the man with love by addressing the man’s deepest issues and seeing him the way God does, as a member of God’s family who was made to bring about God’s glory on this earth.
Let’s look at three elements to help us shed our shrouds of judgment and love more like Christ. First, let us address the issue of sin. While Jesus is not saying that the man and his parents are without sin, Jesus is clarifying that sin did not cause the blindness. What is so humorous about the disciples, and the entire community, accusing the man and his parents of sin is that their statement indicates they are entirely blind to their own sin. While sin has consequences, many things in this world are just how they are. When we focus on someone’s sin, we miss the person, not to mention our sinfulness. The ability to love others the way that God loves us is to recognize the commonality of sin. Placing trust in Jesus and being “saved” does not keep one from sin and does not separate people into sinners and saints. Being able to see one’s own sin and someone else’s sin as the same thing brings about the humanity in all of us and the need that each one of us has for God. It enables us to see that we need God’s love just as much as someone who has not accepted Christ. Seeing the commonality in our sin allows us to cast off judgment.
Second, Jesus enters into the man’s suffering. Sin has labeled the man and his family their entire lives. One can only imagine the judgment, stares, whispers, and even face-to-face unpleasantries the man and his family endured. Jesus cuts to the most painful part of the man’s life by obliterating the idea that sin made the man blind. To love others like God, we must enter into their pain. We have to listen and try to understand what they have been through. We have to give their suffering validity, and in doing so, we make way for God, the great healer, to come in and do what he does best: transform hearts and lives. Walking with others in their pain, we help usher in God’s great love that transforms brokenness and sin into healing and hope.
Third, we have to see people as beloved children of God. Not only does Jesus dismantle the idea that the man’s blindness is due to sin, but Jesus takes it a step further and proclaims that the man has great work to do for God due to his blindness. Jesus sees this man as he was created to be: as a part of God’s kingdom. The man’s greatest struggle and weakness now become his greatest assets through the redemptive work of Christ. We have to take on this perspective to love like God. We have to see others as beloved, as created in God’s image to do his good work. When we see others as God’s beloved creations, we begin to see how they fit into God’s redemptive work and can celebrate all they have to offer.
Love is at the center of God’s most redemptive act. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16). If we are to be reflections of God in this broken world, then we are to love others with the love of God.
