Love Incarnate

The gospel in a word is love.  They'll know we are Christians by our love.  God is love.  For all the talk about love, you'd think it would be so commonly evident in the Body of Christ that the connection would be axiomatic.  You would think churches would be full of people whose love for God and others would be so manifest that people would wonder, "what has gotten into these people?"  (Wouldn't you love to have to answer that question?).

Yet somehow along the way, the majority of us seemed to have missed the memo.  The church has a far greater reputation for being harsh, judgemental, and hypocritical than it does for loving people.  By and large this reputation seems well-earned.  But as Francis Schaeffer aptly pointed out in his book The Mark of a Christian, this really is to be the distinguishing characteristic of those who are in Christ.  Jesus has given license to the world to judge whether we are authentic by viewing our love for one another.  What do they see in us?

Today we lost a man in love.  A dear brother in our congregation left suddenly this Sunday morning from here to worship the Lord in person rather than at New Hope.  He was a Theophilus, a lover of God.  His life oozed passion for a Savior he couldn't wait to see.  Even though doctors had told him cancer would likely claim him, the Lord had other -- and it turns out earlier -- plans.  And as selfish as many of us feel in losing him, the greatest hurt is not that we've lost the man, but the model.

How often do you meet a middle aged man who loves Jesus so much that his affection for him cannot be hidden?  So many of us know "good" men, "solid" men, "hard-working" men, even "godly" men.  Certainly these characteristics are admirable.  But we need people with skin on to show us what love looks like.  I suspect that was the most important reason for God sending His Son Jesus to us in the first place.  We couldn't imagine what real love was like until we saw it ourselves.

For my own part, I miss the conversation I'm not going to get to have with him.  That's two men now with whom I've postponed an important conversation who left for their eternal reward before I was able to have it with them.  Hopefully this time I will heed the warning that there really is precious little time left.  If there is a conversation I need to have, I need to make the time and opportunity for it to happen.  Otherwise it may not happen, and what is incarnate may be available to us no longer.