Love and Tolerance

 

Lately, I've been reading through Romans and the love chapter in Corinthians for my personal bible study. I noticed something interesting in my reading: Love and the holy spirit are inextricably linked together. This makes love really, really important, a paramount aspect of our faith in Jesus Christ.

Since love is so important, there are a couple of questions we should probably answer in order for us to be able to properly express it. What is love, and how do we show it? Does loving people mean we tolerate and accept anything? This last question is going to be the main focus of this article, for answering the other questions is beyond the scope of a single article. We hear a lot about love and tolerance these days. On the news, on social media, from our friends, and maybe even from the pulpit at Church. They tell us that the terms love and tolerance are interchangeable with each other. We are told that to love someone, we must tolerate all of their actions. There's only one question to answer this odd teaching. Is this biblical?   

God is love. Therefore for us to be like Him, we must also be love, as the aspiration of every believer is to become more like Christ. 

Loving as Christ loves is not just the love of our fellow man but also how we show our love of God. What did Christ tell us about how we show our love for Him? If you love me, keep my commandments! (John 14:15). To truly love God, by which is the only way we can truly love our fellow man, we must keep God's commandments. In Micah 6:8 it says,

He has shown you, O man, what is good;

And what does the LORD require of you

But to do justly,

To love mercy,

And to walk humbly with your God?

We only know what is good and just because God gave us his law. This goes beyond the Ten Commandments to include the sum of the Bible. The Ten Commandments lay the principles that the rest of the Bible develops. I'm not talking about the old movie with Charleston Heston either. God's law is consistent throughout the entire Bible and never varies from beginning to end. The law of the apostles is the same law as what Moses kept. (Hebrews 13:8; Numbers 23:19) There was no nailing to the cross of any of the law. Something was nailed to the cross, the note of debt against us in the form of our sins. Because of this, we no longer have to die for our sins once we repent. Christ's sacrifice covers them all.    

If you love God, you keep His commandments. This is not a different doctrine than the one stated in the old testament, "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Leviticus 19:18) We cannot show love to our fellow man unless we are keeping all of God's commands.  

This is not a doctrine of tolerance. This does not mean we love who they are and what they are. We love the person and hate the sin. (Psalm 97:10; Psalm 101:3; Proverbs 8:13; Amos 5:15; Zec 8:17; Romans 12:9) Sometimes people can become so consumed by their evildoings and wickedness that it becomes impossible to separate the sin from the sinner. When this happens, we encounter a conundrum that David answers in the Psalms. (Psalm 119:158; Psalm 139:21-22) He hates them for what they are doing. These are people who completely hate God.

To come to God, a person must be genuinely repentant. This is demonstrated by a change in behavior and love for God. This, again, is shown by keeping His commandments.  

This leads us to, "Well, everyone sins, so why can't we allow gay people in the Church*? Aren't all sins equal?" The answer is no. All sins are not equal. In the Old Testament, you would be stoned for sexual immorality, but not for stealing. In the New Testament, you would be barred from the Church. 

One of the reasons all sins are not equal is because homosexuality and adultery are community sins. They affect everyone in the community and spoil the whole barrel. They are a moral drag that eventually tears the society and family structure down. 

Why? 

Because homosexuality, transgenderism, and other things like it are not natural! 

Regardless of what society says, you were not born that way. They are against the natural order of creation. 

This is why sins of this nature are so dangerous and cannot be allowed in the Church, beyond the reason God says they cannot. A little leaven spoils the whole congregation. 

It begins with tolerance to not offend and ends with ruining the congregation. Tolerance is an enemy of following Christ. To allow these people into the congregation would not be love, not really.

We must require a change from them because it is what God requires. This is true love. To lift them out of the filth of their sin and set them on the path to redemption, which we can only do if God calls them, for it is God who calls, and none can come unless the Father draws him.

One could even say it's hate to allow them in while they are still practicing wickedness and require nothing of them. This is kind of an odd statement and contradicts what culture teaches, but think about it. True love is intolerant of sin because true love recognizes that while it may not immediately lead to death, eventually, it will do so spiritually, which is of far greater sadness than a physical death. We cannot accept their behavior or be tolerant of it. No, "You do you and I'll do me" sort of thing.

This is the same true love of a family that makes them force a beloved drug-addicted child to go to rehab. Not because they hate him, but because they love him and cannot bear to see evil slowly destroy him! They hate his sin! They hate the drugs that he chose that are killing him! There's another factor in this whole situation. Even as much as they love their child, they cannot allow him to remain in the house as long as he stays on the drugs because he will corrupt the rest of the children. His life is not the only one on the line, and the rest of the children's lives must be considered! Therefore they must send him away to rehab. Out of love for him, but also love for the rest of their children. 

Sin is the same, slowly killing their spiritual life and endangering the spiritual life of everyone else in the congregation. This means it is hatred, hatred! to let them in without requiring a change. Hatred not just of them but also of your fellow brethren. Of course, as soon as there is reform shown, they can be allowed to come home; the child to his family, and the former sexually immoral to his spiritual family.

It can be tough to tell someone they can no longer attend until they make some profound changes in their life, but until they do, for the sake of their spiritual life and the sake of the spiritual life of the rest of the congregation, they must not be allowed to corrupt the body of Christ. This is true love. 

There is a disturbing trend in some of the churches of God. A steady downward decline, with people, no longer seeing an issue with these sorts of things. One of these days, a gay or transgender person is going to try to attend services. How are we going to respond? As society degrades around us, it can be easy for us to base our standard on being better than the world instead of following what the Bible says. This is why we have to open this discussion now. If we wait until they are through the door to even open the discussion on this topic, it's already too late. Satan is the author of confusion. He is chaos himself. We must be ready to remove those who bring confusion with them on their coattails. We must be prepared to follow God's word and Christ's example. Christ is our ultimate role model, the one we all look to for our example, right? We cannot have love without Him, and we cannot have him without keeping His commandments. 

That's why this is in the context of love because, unlike the world's definition, real love isn't just a feeling; it's a logical thought process and action based on what is ultimately best for someone, not physically but spiritually. That's why parents spank their kids out of love and why God disciplines us. He loves us so much that He gave His only son for us so that we might live, not just physically, but with eternal life. This tremendous act of love is also, in some ways, a punishment, at the very least, a stark reminder of the consequences our sins have, not just for those around us and ourselves, but for the Son of God. It's just as much our fault that He died as it is the fault of the Jews who crucified Him. What an example of love! He died for us while we were yet sinners. (Romans 5:8)

He wishes all to come to the knowledge of Him. How can we know who He has called? We know them by their fruits. What is one of the main fruits of the spirit? Love! What is one of the main things homosexuals have fought for legally? They have fought for their love of each other to be accepted by everyone. But what love is this? A perverted sort of love, one that goes against everything the Bible stands for. To even call it love is a misnomer. Their love is perverted and, as such, cannot be a fruit of the spirit, can it? Thus in order to be a part of the body of Christ, they must eliminate their perverted love. Otherwise, they will be cut off from God. Every tree that bears bad fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 7:19) Better they not be a part of the body of Christ in this life at all than that they are part of it falsely. (2 Peter 2:21) 

To be part of the Church*, we must keep His commandments; this is the love of God. To truly love God is not a feeling inspired by the Sunday morning worship band, a warm fuzzy feeling that fades as soon as you walk out the door. Even worshipping on Sunday instead of Saturday is a rejection of God. 

To show love to God is to do what He says, and that means in the entire Bible, not just the new testament. They must be taken together and do not contradict each other; the new reinforces the old. This is how we show that we love Him. Actions speak louder than words, as they say, and love is an action word. 

In the words of R. A. Torrey, "If loving God with all our heart and soul and might is the greatest commandment, then it follows that not loving Him that way is the greatest sin."

Love and tolerance are not the same. They are opposites. We cannot love and be tolerant, for God's law is not tolerant of sin, and we show our love of God by keeping it. Will sinners be allowed into the kingdom? This is a bit of a trick question, and the answer is no. 

No one who is a sinner will be in the kingdom. Aren't all of us sinners, though? Yup. I certainly am, and I know everyone else in here is. So how will we make it into the kingdom then? The blood of Christ! The anniversary of the Son of God dying to be our covering happens every Passover. The anniversary of our hope. 

So, let us be intolerant of sin, in ourselves most of all, and let us always keep at the front of our mind, in this time between Passover and Trumpets Jesus's answer to the Pharisee when he asked what the greatest commandment is. This is found in Mark 12:29. 

Jesus replied, "This is the most important: 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' g 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' h No other commandment is greater than these."  

©Kyle Bacher 2022

*The Church - A term referring to the larger body of believers who compose the Body of Christ. Not in reference to any specific organization or congregation.