How to Love People Who Feel Impossible to Love
“But That’s Impossible” Is the Whole Point
God often asks his people for the impossible. In Exodus 13–14, God led his people out of slavery in Egypt and into an impossible predicament. They were trapped between the Red Sea ahead and the pursuing army behind. Yet God led them through the sea. I love how Isaiah put it, hundreds of years later:
Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters. (Isa. 43:16)
In other words, this is not merely something that God did once upon a time. Making a way through the sea is his signature move! Jesus tells the man with the withered hand to stretch it out (Matt. 12:13). “But that’s impossible!” He tells the crippled man to get up and walk (John 5:8). “But that’s impossible!” He tells the dead man to get up (John 11:43). “But that’s impossible!”
Love the Ones Who Drive You Crazy
Jamie Dunlop
This practical guide shares 8 truths to show readers how they can cultivate God-exalting unity by loving those in the church who, if they’re honest, sometimes drive them crazy.
Jesus’s commands offer more than instruction; they empower. At his command, the withered hand stretches out. The lame man walks. The dead man walks.
The same is true of life in your church. Easy love rarely shows off gospel power. But love that stretches beyond what’s possible is a stage, set to display the glory of God.
The Limits of “Ought To”
“OK,” you say. “I’m sold! I love this idea of church as beautiful reflection. I’m going to go build friendships with people in my church who are different from me, where we often disagree and don’t share much in common aside from Jesus. And together we’re going to show off the power of the gospel!” That determination is a good start, but if that’s as far as you go, you’re asking for trouble. Before we go any further, we should rope off one potentially harmful route to obedience.
In friendship, real motives become evident over time. “Do you really love me? Or do you love what it looks like to love me?” That can smell like tokenism, not friendship. And too many of the brothers and sisters in your church who are accustomed to feeling different from the rest have learned the hard way that they are sometimes valued mainly because they make the church look better. These could be people who are different from most of the church in terms of skin color, social class, age, political leanings, and so forth. I should tread carefully here. I don’t want to portray obedience-oriented love as entirely wrongheaded. “Ought to” is an entirely valid reason to love others in your church (John 14:15; 15:12). “Ought to” can be a good starting point for love, but “ought to” cannot be the furthest extent of your ambitions for love. If you love simply because you ought to love, then your love may come across as something less than love. And such love loses its luster once its true motivation comes to light.
How can we move from avoiding “those people,” to tolerating them, to loving them because we “ought” to, to loving them with affection as family?
Treasure God’s Mercy
The answer is mercy. The road from “ought to” to “want to” begins with God’s mercy. That’s what we see in Romans 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” With this verse, Paul begins one of Scripture’s longest discourses on love. But let’s not rush into his imperatives so quickly that we skip over what makes such love possible.
“By the mercies of God.” In Romans 1–11, the mercies of God have reconciled Jew and Gentile to God through faith in Christ and, as a result, to one other. Then, in Romans 12, we learn the practicalities of this union. It’s like Paul is saying, “Congratulations! You’re one big happy family (Rom. 1–11). Now let’s figure out how this is going to work (Rom. 12–15).” Specifically, the love he will describe in these chapters is a love that’s powered by mercy.
What is mercy? Mercy is God rescuing us from the consequences of our sin. That’s one reason why we must resist the temptation to minimize or ignore our sin. We often consider the undeserved blessings we’ve received as Christians (adoption as his sons, the inheritance of heaven, the gift of the Spirit, and many more). But for many, we’re less accustomed to considering the punishment Jesus took for us. Yet if we do not comprehend sin’s consequences that we should have borne, we will fail to appreciate the wealth of God’s mercy in Christ, and our love will be weak.
I remember when this hit home for me. I had gossiped about an acquaintance at church, sharing private information with a group of people. He was understandably embarrassed when he discovered what I’d done, and angry at me for poking fun at something so sensitive. He confronted me, I apologized, and I confessed to God. Ordinarily I would have left things there and moved on.
Mercy is God rescuing us from the consequences of our sin.
But this time I decided to take Paul’s words seriously. I stared into the sin of my heart. I saw that what masqueraded as a small sin was in fact quite significant. I’d carelessly and selfishly abused this man’s trust, getting attention from others at his expense. Not only that, but my sin against Jesus was even greater. The only reason I had this information in the first place was because this man was my brother in Christ, and I had abused Christ’s gift of this relationship. When I prioritized a few laughs above this man’s dignity, I was devaluing Christ, the source of his dignity. The more I followed my sin down into the recesses of my heart, the worse it appeared, and the more I saw that this sin was primarily against Christ (Ps. 51:4). Far from the “little sin” I’d initially dismissed, it was a big, ugly mess.
Then began the wonderful journey up into the heights of God’s mercy. God already knew all this! He knew it all when in his mercy he sent Jesus to die in my place to take the punishment I deserved. He gave me new life, knowing I’d sometimes use it to defame those he’d died for. He loved me that much. And in these unexplored depths of God’s mercy, I discovered a new degree of love for God. The whole process took maybe five or ten minutes. Yet never since have I viewed confession of sin as a merely perfunctory duty. It’s alive with opportunity to behold the mercy of God in all its love-giving power.
Brother or sister, if you are to love the “unlovables” in your church, you must begin to grasp how unlovable you were when Christ chose to put his love on you, and how unlovable you remain today even as you are secure in his love. To whatever extent you minimize your sin, or offer excuses for it, or decide not to think about it, you undermine the power of God in your life. On the other hand, when you do grasp the astounding truth of God’s mercy, it will change everything.
This article is adapted from Love the Ones Who Drive You Crazy: Eight Truths for Pursuing Unity in Your Church by Jamie Dunlop.
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