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Choose to Move Toward Others in Love

We frequently use movement as an indicator of life. We live in a culture where everyone is on the move. We use the concept metaphorically when we talk about moving ahead, moving forward, and moving on.

God calls us through His Word to move in several different ways. One of them is what I call moving toward others in love. Naturally speaking if we see someone who is physically attractive to us, who is kind and good and helpful, we don’t have a problem moving toward them in love. But if we bump into someone who is a little harsh with us, somewhat critical, maybe saying or doing hurtful things, then we have a tendency to do one of two things. We either move toward them in hostility or we withdraw. We pull back emotionally and/or and physically and say “If that is the kind of person you are just go ahead and be that kind of person on your own because I don’t have anything to do with people like you.”

What we will see God’s word call us to do is move toward others in love, not to withdraw from them and not to move toward them in hostility. Look with me at Ephesians 5:1 and 2 where we read: “Be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet–smelling aroma.” Notice in this matter of love, Christ is the example. Because Christ has loved us and given Himself for us, we are to able to walk in love. The action verb here is “to walk,” moving toward others in love according to these verses.

Paul adds to the concept in Colossians 2:2 where he talks about his desire that Christians’ hearts “be knit together in love, and attain to all riches of the full assurance of understanding...” This is a lovely word picture: this concept of being knit together. Within the body of Christ, we could be seen as a collection of bits of yarn being knit together, becoming oen fabric. You can’t imagine if the beige yarn is fighting with the brown yarn, saying “I don’t want to be next to you in the pattern.” It’s bizarre. But sometimes Christians struggle against this work of the Spirit in knitting us together in love. Once again the challenge is to move toward others in love. To allow the Spirit of God to unite us with all other believers.

We all have jerks in our lives, people who irritate us, people who are unkind to us, people who step on us and exploit us. How do we love those people? That is a challenge, but we are called to do that. We are not called to be hostile or withdraw, we are called to move toward them in love. The Lord Jesus Christ, as we saw in Ephesians, is the ultimate example of moving toward others in love.

Here we are puny little human beings on earth shaking our fists at the God who gives us life saying, “We’re not interested in You. Keep away. We’ll do things our own way.” And as we slowly self destruct individually and culturally, He moves toward us in love. He came and walked among us, healing our sick, calming our fears, feeding our hungry, delivering us from bondage. He was the epitome of a servant. He moved toward us in love and calls us to follow His example.

This is why it is so important that we learn to forgive each other, we cancel the debt. We learn to say, “because Jesus died for your sin I will forgive you.” and that allows us to move toward that other person even though there was genuine harm done to us.

Let’s look at Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 3:12 “And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you...” I like the use of those words “increase” and “abound.” Paul says there is always room for growth in love. You can always find new ways to express it, new ways to reach out, ways to deepen your mutual attachment as believers. So we need to be constantly increasing.

But somebody might be tempted to say, “Surely there must be a limit to that. How far do you go? Just how much sacrifice do you make?” The really logical people will say, “Well you realize if you give everything away you won’t have anything left to give anybody else and then you’d be destitute and people would have to give to you.” That sounds fair except that we are talking about something beyond ourselves here. If it all depended on us to love and increase in love each time with everybody we would never make it. What we have left doesn’t usually go very far. But when we tap in to the love of Christ then our love can increase, because it is not our love. It is Him loving other people through us. This offers real hope that we can have fruitful love in our relationship with each other to the point where it abounds.

I love all the verses that use words like “abounding” and “abundant” and “exceeding” and “greater” and “beyond imagination.” The gospel is really excessive. It is over the top. No limit confines the love of God so it really can increase to the point where it is abundant - abounding all over the place and people can’t avoid being touched by His love, expressed in your life.

Ron Hughes
© April 2009