This Is One Of Those Posts That Starts By Talking About One Thing...

...and ends talking about another.

I need a top ten list entitled "Things I Wish Jesus Had Never Said." I think that part about radical amputation would be on it, as well as that one bit about the rich kid where Jesus told him to sell everything and give to the poor (and in case you think that was only for the rich kid, He repeats it to us in Luke 12:33).

But one definitely near the top of said hypothetical list would be this whopper from John 15.
Every time someone talks about loving God or loving people, this little guy comes to mind and all I can think is "Man, I screwed up."

I keep coming back to this passage in the 3 a.m.s of life - where self-reflection replaces sleep and I become an evaluative insomniac. It's a bit masochistic to keep thinking about since it always reminds me how much I suck. And if you know me, you know I don't like to think about how much I suck. Which is why I need to think about it. I need to think about love and all the ways I fail and all the grace that God gives anyway.

Everyone knows Jesus wants people to love one another. Most over-emphasize it into bobble-head Jesus buddy that you stick on your dashboard and He gives you a tolerant thumbs-up to whatever lifestyle you live. But love does not equal tolerance, and that is a topic for another post.

I still haven't even told you which part of John 15 yet.

John 14-16 is Jesus' last words to His disciples before one of them disguised his knife-to-the-back with a kiss. And John 17 is His High Priestly Prayer for all the church. So these words are uber-important.

And it's just these two verses juxtaposed together that are the heavy sledgehammer driving the nail of conviction into my brain.
John 15:9 - "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you."
John 15:12 - "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

Did you catch that? Jesus commands us to love each other the way he loves us. He loves us with the same love that God the Father has for Him. So we are to love each other with the kind of love that makes Jupiter seem like a marble. We are to love one another with the same love that God the Father has for God the Son.



Yeah, that sinking feeling of disappointment in your gut? I get that all the time.

That's because this verse reminds what all our self-flattery and layers of self-admiration try to keep us from remembering - that we really do fail. That no matter how much we think about how good we are, at the end of the day, we are pretty crappy. That all that talk about loving God and loving others are just words hanging limp and lifeless in the air. They have no action to back them up, because no action we could ever do could ever come close to the standard demanded.

It's ironic; you have to see that you really can't do anything before you'll ever get anywhere. Locomotion through surrender. You don't get to be anything until you see that you're nothing. You don't have any merit in you, although you may think you've got at least an ounce. But you're wrong (and so am I), we've got as much weight as a feather in space. And, mathematically, zero is infinitely less than one, so you are infinitely worse than you think you are.

And I'm in that same boat. I can exert all the Pharisee strength I want against the door of reward, but I don't have the right muscles to break it down.

I was going to write some about how much God the Father delights in Jesus, but I can't seem to get up the courage to write down that standard. More judgment on my head, if I did. I'd rather just revel in the grace given to me, for I am the failure at love, the disobedient and unholy child, unable to love the Father or the other children.

And so I repent. Dust and Ashes my close companions. The sackcloth my fashion statement. I can't do it Father, do it for me. Lift me from these shattered idea of myself, you're rod is too strong for my pride to withstand. I can't do it - I can do all things through God who strengthens me. I have no power - except that of God working in me. Lord help me.

Like I said, I started talking about love, and somehow moved to repentance. Maybe that's the way most topics should end - on our knees.