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We Love as We are Loved

We Love as We are Loved

God’s wrath for our sin was satisfied on the cross, and we are now sons and daughters. Therefore, we lavishly offer love and grace to one another and to those in our world. Love as you are loved, forgive as you are forgiven.

I’m excited about this value of Grace Community Church as it is the value most associated with the word “grace.” We value showing grace and love to one another as a high priority.  We long for it to permeate everything we do in all aspects of our life together. If you are like me, you find these words inviting and they warm your heart. I hope you are thinking, “Yes! I want to be a part of this.”

This is also one of the most difficult of the values to live out. I long to bask in the grace that God gives me in Jesus Christ, and live in freedom and forgiveness. Hallelujah! That received forgiveness also implies that I become a forgiver (Matthew 6:11-14; Ephesians 4:31-32). Now, suddenly, it gets more complicated.

To “forgive as you are forgiven” means that an offense has occurred which someone else has done against me. Sometimes it’s a little thing, and for me that’s OK and I can just let that one go. But what if they gossiped about you? What if you experienced real harm from your encounter - pain! What if their actions stirred up old wounds going all the way back to your childhood? Their actions have both touched and awakened deep pain within you.

Suddenly, you are wishing you went to “Law Community Church” instead of Grace Community Church!  You are looking for the bible verses on church discipline, and studying the PCA Book of Church Order to make sure you know the next steps of church court strategy. You want justice! You demand repentance, easily forgetting how shallow and halfhearted your own repentance can be!

I know this, because you and I are alike! We want our reputations defended at all costs, and we want the offenders properly punished and put out of the church in utter humiliation - yes, I exaggerate a bit.

It’s been a long and painful process for me to see the gospel opportunity of these offenses. I started praying for my enemies, that God would give me grace to bless them, love them, and forgive them. If their repentance was shallow to me, I brought them to the one who knows them and knows me. I pray for the healing of our relationships. I look for the opportunities to live out, “Love as you have been loved.”

What if the Lord Jesus had taken a harsh approach with me the first time my repentance was shallow and incomplete, and what if he gave me all that I deserved when I was self-righteous and puffed up with pride, assured that I was correct? I wouldn’t have lasted very long. He has surely humbled me plenty of times due to these sins.

This side of eternity relationships with others are always going to have an element of pain and disappointment. However, learning to live out the grace we have received offers the possibilities of eventual, and sometimes spectacular reconciliation.  Even when reconciliation doesn’t happen, grace can free us from a life of bitterness that would tell our story as if God wasn’t good and sovereign, and others ruined our lives.

That’s a lot to live up to, Grace Community Church! How’s it going?

In Him,

Don

Don Ward

Senior Pastor

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