Unconditional Love

I have a confession to make to you. I played a lot of sports growing up. I played basketball, baseball, soccer, football, and I was even on a bowling league. I enjoyed sports. I loved to run and hit and swing and kick and, well, anything that involved moving. You may find this hard to believe, but I was actually good at every sport I played…except basketball.

I enjoyed sports, but jocks…they got on my nerves. They still do. When I meet someone that has that typical jock mentality, I instantly want to find somewhere else to be. There is something about even the way they talk that just irritates me.

By high school I realized that I fit in more with the band geeks, academic nerds, and Jesus freaks. I could relate to them more. I understood them. They talked my language. I was part of them. They were my peeps. I had a few friends that played sports and didn’t fall into the same mold, but for the most part I had developed an attitude that jocks were dumb, loud, obnoxious, and annoying.

During my time in college I roomed with a few different people, including one guy that was very much a jock. He played basketball every day, he played racquetball, he went bowling…if he wasn’t in class, he was off somewhere playing some type of sport. When he was in the room all he wanted to do was watch sports on TV.

He did not help change my opinion of jocks. He was always loud, he burped constantly, never took his turn to clean the dishes, would gladly sleep in trash rather than pick-up, came in late all of the time, and was academically lazy. But even the original Odd Couple become friends, just as we did. I learned to overlook his unique mannerisms and he learned to overlook mine…to a point.

We all have grown to think of certain types of people in certain ways. And that pre-conceived or even prejudicial attitude can keep us from loving our neighbors in the way that God has called us to. Our fleshly nature can lead us to pick and choose who we will love even though God has clearly called us to love everyone.

Neighborliness Requires Love

²⁵ Just then an expert in the law stood up to test Him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

²⁶ “What is written in the law?” He asked him. “How do you read it?”

²⁷ He answered: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

²⁸ “You’ve answered correctly,” He told him. “Do this and you will live.”

²⁹ But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

³⁰ Jesus took up the question and said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead. ³¹ A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³² In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³ But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion. ³⁴ He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵ The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him. When I come back I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.’

³⁶ “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

³⁷ “The one who showed mercy to him,” he said.

Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10:25-37, HCSB)

You might remember that the most Jews had been taught for ages that they should avoid Samaritans. The Samaritans had been despised, mistrusted, hated, and even mistreated by the Jews. They were seen as gutter trash. Yet here we see that both a Jewish priest and Jewish rabbi avoided a fellow Jewish man while the Samaritan man stopped to help him.

Let me put this into a scenario that you might better understand:

A white man was walking down a street when some thugs beat him up, robbed him, and left him for dead. A white pastor walked down the same street and saw the man lying on the sidewalk all blooded. So, he crossed the street and continued on his way. Later a white worship pastor also came down the street and saw this white man lying on the sidewalk close to death. He also crossed the street and continued on his way.

Then a black man, who had experienced a lifetime of hate, name-calling, mistrust, and more at the hands of white people, saw this white man bleeding out of the sidewalk. He goes over to him, picks him up, puts him in his brand-new car ruining the interior, blood getting everywhere, and takes him to the nearest hospital. The injured man has no ID on him, so his rescuer gave the hospital money to cover his expenses and said, “If he needs anything more, I’ll cover it.”

Through this story, Jesus showed the religious leaders that loving our neighbors means loving all people regardless of what they look like, where they are from, or what they have done. Even if we have been taught to hate them or they hate us, we are to love them with an unconditional love.

Forgiveness Requires Love

Martin Luther King Jr. said: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.” When we are showing the love of Christ to others, we are doing for them exactly what we needed at one point in our lives.

There was a prophet of God that had to learn about forgiveness as well. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and let them know that because of their evil actions, God was going to destroy their entire nation…unless they repented. Jonah was afraid to go to Nineveh. The Ninevites were known for being cruel people that created horrible torture tactics. Jonah was afraid he would be one of their next victims.

Instead of going to Nineveh, Jonah ran away as fast as he could. He boarded on a ship headed in the opposite direction. God sent a storm that almost sunk the ship. The sailors were frightened and wanted to know who was rocking the boat. They believed that somebody had angered God in some way and Jonah admitted that he was to blame for the storm. He told them men to toss him in the sea and their ship would be saved. As soon as they tossed him over, the storm instantly ceased, and a great fish appeared and swallowed Jonah.

For 3 days and nights, Jonah was inside of this big fish until he finally prayed and asked God for forgiveness. God had the fish vomit him up on the shoreline and told Jonah again to go to Nineveh and tell them that He was going to destroy them unless they repented. So, Jonah went and preached to the town telling them God was going to destroy them. And the Bible says the entire city repented and God changed His mind.

Jonah just couldn’t take it. He wanted to see these evil people destroyed. He couldn’t wait to watch God smite them, to pummel them, to do to them all of the horrible things that they had done to others. But instead, God forgave them. And for that reason, Jonah was furious with God.

¹ But Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. ² He prayed to the Lord: “Please, Lord, isn’t this what I said while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that You are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to become angry, rich in faithful love, and One who relents from sending disaster. ³ And now, Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:1-3, HCSB)

How silly. Jonah was so angry about God’s willingness to forgive others that he begged God to just kill him. Jonah could not give up his hatred of the Ninevites. He could not see them as part of those that God had commanded him to love.

We are not God and we do not have the right to decide who is worthy to be loved and who is not. God said that He loves everyone. God loved us even when could care less about Him. God told us to love everyone. To love them like He does. Can you forgive others in the same way that God has forgiven you? Forgiveness requires love. A love that God has already shown to us.