1 John 4:20-21 (NIV)19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
I fear for many “churched people”. They attend “worship” services weekly, they sing, they read their bibles, they “say prayers” ; they give money to help people in need. On the outside they have a “good Christian” image; yet in their hearts there is much hatred toward fellow believers. They fail the greatest litmus test of all. They have forgotten the love and grace that God has shown them; and emotionally they hold others responsible for the pain in their own lives.
“It’s my spouse or my parents, or my boss or my sister or my brother, it’s my Pastor, or my friends; they are the reason that I’m the way I am.” What makes this even more dangerous is that fact that many of us would say that “we don’t hate someone” even when we actually do. After all hatred is not a part of the “image” we desire to maintain. However we know that while man looks on the outward appearance of other men, God Himself look into the heart (2 Sam 16.7-9).
The all-knowing God looks right past all our veneer and stares directly into our hearts and I fear he sees seething hatred in many. In our hatred we prove that we have never been recipients of God’s love or have forgotten the compassion of God has shown us in Christ. For when you receive Him we drop our weapons of malice, gossip, and slander and we embrace people as they are. We may still have a desire to see them different, but none the less we love them as they are not as they ought to be.
