Love Sure Ain’t Blind

“… Be sober and watch unto prayer. And above all have fervent charity among yourselves”.

Soberness, watchfulness and love all go together.

The first two terms have to do with the seriousness that is to characterize believers as they await the second coming of King Christ; whereas the third is related to the spirit that undergirds the sobriety and the watching.

True biblical charity is both sober and alert.

When you love a person with the love of Christ, you act soberly towards that soul and watch over him (or her). You correct them in the name of the Lord when needs be in much the same fashion as a loving parent will discipline their wayward child. Biblical love believes in correction. Pagan love, however, believes in confronting no one.

Christ resumed the Law of God in two great commandments: love towards God and love towards one’s neighbor. Love toward God is exemplified In the first table of the Law i.e. the first four commandments; whereas charity towards one neighbor is expressed in the second table, that is, the remaining six commandments. 2 John 6 reads, “This is love: that we walk after His commandments”.

So Jesus endorsed this image of a sober and watchful charity. Love is a whole lot more than experiencing sweet butterflies in one’s belly. True love is fiery, weighty and faithful till the end.

Sadly, the whole concept of Christian love has been much abused throughout the ages. People used to ask (and to this day some continue asking): if God is love, how come people go to hell?

But such a question presupposes a non-offending pagan concept of love. A loving police officer casts a criminal into jail. A loving law system punishes the transgressor.

In our days, however, a new version of pagan love is being spread abroad within the walls of Christendom. It is the type of charity that tolerates sin in the visible church.

In years gone by, it used to be that Protestant churches exercised discipline in order to maintain the purity of the local congregation.

Today, however, if a saint of God raises his (her) voice against sin, he (she) is immediately branded as a non-Christian, devoid of the Spirit of Jesus. And who makes this judgment? Those who do not believe in loving Christian discipline i.e. those who conveniently do not take Jesus’ teaching upon church discipline into account (see Matthew 18).

This ignorance of the biblical Christ breeds much confusion within the evangelical camp. The love of Christ is a charity that believes in rebuke and correction so that all of Jesus’ sheep progress from glory to glory.

Once again, it is a sober love; an observant love.

In other words, Christian love sure ain’t blind.

APPLICATION

This means that we need our wits about us. As Francis Schaeffer reminded us back in the eighties, not all those who sport the ‘Jesus’ banner really know Him.

We must put all spirits to the test to make sure that they speak to us according to the Word of God. A non-biblical, lackadaisical Jesus is a figment of the unbeliever’s imagination.

“… Be sober and watch unto prayer. And above all have fervent charity among yourselves”.