Unfair!

There is the true story of a seminary student in Chicago who faced the unconditional love test. Although he preferred to work in some kind of ministry, the only job he could find was driving a bus on Chicago’s south side. One day a gang of tough teens got on board and refused to pay the fare. After a few days of this, the seminarian spotted a policeman on the corner, stopped the bus, and reported them. The officer made them pay, but then he got off. When the bus rounded a corner, the gang robbed the seminarian and beat him severely. He pressed charges and the gang was rounded up. They were found guilty. But as soon as the jail sentence was given, the young Christian saw their spiritual need and felt pity for them. So he asked the judge if he could serve their sentences for them. The gang members and the judge were dumbfounded. “It’s because I forgive you,” he explained. His request was denied, but he visited the young men in jail and led several of them to faith in Christ.

This is a beautiful picture of grace in action when someone has wronged you:

• He had been wronged.
• He was beaten severely.
• He pressed charges.
• Then wanted to serve their sentence
• Went to visit them in jail.
• He ended leading several of them to Christ.

For Christ followers – this is one of the hardest things to do. Why is it so hard for Christ followers to love someone unconditionally when they have been wronged? Loving someone unconditionally is not our natural response. From nursery school on we are taught to succeed in the world – in the words of Philip Yancey – the world of ungrace. oWe are trained to work hard for what we earn and the early bird gets the worm. There is no such thing as a free lunch.  We are trained to demand our rights. You get what you pay for. We want fairness. We want people to get what they deserve.

If you read the gospels you hear a totally different story.  We did not get what I deserved. We deserved punishment and got forgiveness. We deserved wrath and got Gods love. God’s grace is free of charge, no strings attached. There is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make God love you less. (Yancey) What God gives to us is totally undeserved and unearned.

In the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). You have the younger brother who went and squandered his inheritance. You have the self-righteous older brother who stayed at home and did everything by the book. The younger brother excepted the forgiveness of the father. The older brother couldn’t show his younger brother grace. He thought that what his father did for the younger brother wasn’t right. He thought his younger brother deserved to be punished.

What did the father do? He ran and he embraced his younger son! He also had a talk with his older son when he wouldn’t come to the party. The younger brother accepted the father’s forgiveness. The older son hardened his heart and wouldn’t come to the party.

What this story teaches us is that – whether we like it or not God loves the undeserving.  The older and the younger brother did not deserve to be loved. God loved them both unconditionally. The younger accepted his love but the older brother rejected it. Christianity is the only religion that makes God’s love unconditional. The Buddhist have the eight fold path, the Hindu has the doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant and the Muslim code of law offers a way to earn God’s approval.

What’s puzzling to me is, “why do many Christians make God’s love conditional?” The younger brother and the older brother were both trying to make God’s love conditional. The younger brother had a speech already that gave the father the conditions he was going to come back on. The older brother had another kind of speech ready that said he was being treated unfairly. We still try to do that. We still try to make God’s love conditional.We still try to tell God who deserves to be loved and who doesn’t. We still try to measure up to God’s standard of living. The truth is none of us can measure up to God’s standard of living. The police officers in Baltimore can’t measure up and the young black man whose spine was broke can’t measure up. Label them any way you want but Romans 3:23 reminds us we all fall short of the glory of God. This is why we need to understand God’s amazing grace.We need grace to enable us to unconditionally love those who don’t deserve to be loved.  We need grace to be able to love those who have wronged us. (our prodigals)

Like I said in the previous blog entry there  is nothing your children did that convinced you to love them. You simply loved them. You accepted them as they are. You have bought them gifts when they didn’t really deserve it. There are people in our life who have wronged us, hurt us, and discouraged us. The gospels to teach we are to love them.

Do they deserve it? No.
Do they have to earn love from you?….. No.
Do they have to jump through hoops, stand on their head, and shout, “I love Barney!”  No.

God tells us simply to love them.

Jesus did this all the time. He was mistreated by Pharisees but he still loved them. He was abandoned by his closest friends but he still loved them. He was mocked, ridiculed, and left for dead by his enemies. Despite the unfairness of the way he was treated he still loved them. He couldn’t make them love him back. He couldn’t make them understand that what they were doing to him was wrong. He simply said Father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.

If you are a Christ follower, you are called do the same. We are called to love the undeserving. We are called to go the second mile. We are called to love our enemies. We are called to love our neighbor as our self.

It’s totally unfair. Grace is totally unfair because it’s about the other person not getting what we think they truly deserve. Sometimes grace lets the other person win. Sometimes grace lets the other person get their way. Sometimes grace lets them go scot-free without any kind of punishment.  This is where the Christ-followers are going to make the difference in a world filled with ungrace.

Remember the story at the beginning? The young seminarian tried to take their punishment. He didn’t give up there! No he went the second mile and went to the guys who beat him up! He introduced each of them to Christ. He loved his enemies and some of them became his brothers in Christ. Didn’t it make a difference in those guys lives? You better believe it. Whether they followed Christ or not they experienced the unconditional love of God.

How do you do that?

First of all, one must be convinced that everyone deserves to experience the love of God. Like them you were undeserving. It appears that the more undeserving a person feels the more that person feels drawn to Jesus. On the other hand, the ones who believe they are deserving (the ones who think they are more righteous than others, the ones who have their life together) feel threatened by the Jesus (like the older brother). It doesn’t make a difference how righteous or how together your life is – you are still no more deserving to be loved by God than the looters of Baltimore or Ferguson.

Secondly, you must lead with humility.

I met a young man whose name is David Blough. He is one of the most humble young men I have ever met. He shared his story of how Jesus has changed his life. David is a sophomore at Purdue and according to ESPN is one of the top six quarterbacks in the nation.  As impressive as his accolades are, he knew that everything he had been given to Him to by God. I sensed from him he didn’t think he deserved any of the accolades he was receiving. His humility gave it away. He simply was honored that coaches across America would consider him to be their starting quarterback. He leads with humility.

Leading with humility means you don’t have to be right all the time. You don’t have to proves others wrong all the time. You don’t have to hold grudges against others. Leading with humility  is the only way you can love someone with unconditional love. Like in the last blog entry, find the most difficult person in your life right now and humble yourself. Don’t think of yourself better than them. In fact, loving them unconditionally means you think they are better than you. 

Jesus didn’t think he was better than others. He simply humbled himself and loved others. He served everyone. Paul didn’t think he was better than others. He called himself the worst of sinners. The young man at the beginning of this entry didn’t think he was better than the kids who were in jail. His prevailing goal was to introduce them to Jesus.

Thirdly, live in grace.

Grace says the person who wronged you needs to be loved by you. Grace says there is nothing fair about loving others unconditionally. Loving others unconditionally requires a lot of grace. That’s how we love our spouse, our kids, our best friends.  It’s easy to love them unconditionally. Jesus says, we are to extend grace to others whether they are deserving or not.

We all have prodigal people in our life. People who have cashed in their relational inheritance by wronging you. We are called to go and love them with an undeserving, unconditional, unmerited kind of love. Who knows? Maybe the might meet Jesus.

Will you love the prodigal’s in your life the way the Father loved His prodigal?