How does one stand against sin... and still prove they love a sinner?
When my father would punish us we knew first what we had done wrong... and also what our punishment would be.
Often it was a spanking, a firm hand smacking us on our behinds, sharp and stinging, we heard one phrase most often:
"This hurts me more than it hurts you."
No, my Dad wasn't speaking of his calloused hand's suffering upon our denim covered bottoms. He was speaking his heart. It pained him, in his love of us, to punish us.
My parents knew right from wrong far better than my siblings and I. So the punishment was just: it was adequate to answer for the transgression. That is to say we had it coming. Still my Dad took no pleasure in delivering the penalty.
As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we do not possess the hand which smites every ungodly act and its perpetrator. We do however hold in our hearts proof of the inescapable verdict.
So then Brothers and Sisters. When you feel the burden of the sentence you carry. The one you've been freed of through the unwarranted suffering of the absolute Sacrifice... When you see that the unsaved demand you admit to believing the truth of God's word, that all have sinned, that many acts of the flesh, of the world and in the Devil are damning; furthermore that this belief implies they too are doomed... Remember this image:
My father crying.
He'd administered the punishment, holding me in his arms with tears of compassion, as I clung to the torso of the one man I had but a moment before feared more than death itself.
If we could but convey the same love for those to whom we are called to deliver the truth to! If our hearts broke not only for falleness in friends, strangers, enemies and relatives, but moreso for the pain that calling 'broken' what is broken causes us! How might this change the reactions the cracked vessels which wander this blue marble to our righteousness! If our demeanor and sincere reaction to such a task be made clear to those that stumble, perhaps they might understand the love of our Savior in our broken-heartedness! God I pray so, I hope that I might have the heart of my Dad as he punished me when I am addressing the unsaved. And I praise God that we were only given truth to be truth, not as a sword but as a constant reminder of a kingdom that is coming, and is already here in the hearts which know Jesus!
This is how we might deliver harder truths; and by God's grace not be misunderstood as bigots and righteous do-gooders. This love distinguishes wrong from wrongdoer, without pushing aside the need for grace; it is the persuasion of those that love the lost, and only under compulsion of a greater love can we utter anything contrary to the ways of the lost.
Be compelled I beg you, but show your true heart also! So that your Heavenly Father's judgement may be made manifest in all it's holy justice, working upon the hearts of the fallen, compelling them to repentance, that more souls may be named in the book of life, and called also to spread His love for humanity in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ!
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