The Righteous Love of God

Today, the concept of love has been distorted and, in some cases, used against us. God is indeed love. 1 John 4:7. Scripture tells us to love our enemies and our neighbours. Matthew 5:44. And while this is absolutely true, and we as Christians will continue to do so, it is very important to understand and clearly distinguish that God's love also includes righteousness, which has often been overlooked in favour of niceness.

The bible tells us to be righteous. Matthew 6:33. It never mentions nice. It is so important, when walking out our Christian life on this Earth, that we walk out 'Love' as it is in God's eyes, with righteousness, authority, integrity, and direction for those who have wandered astray.

We love what God loves, and we do not yoke ourselves to what God hates. Jesus himself exercised this righteousness when he went to the Synagogue and found it a marketplace. He formed a whip and sent buyers and the sellers from the Synagogue out onto the streets, and he flipped over the tables. John 2:13-17.

What is right and what is wrong in God's eyes allows us to have a clear, undistorted definition of God's love. As Christians, we have to walk diligently, constantly reviewing our family lives, our individual lives, and our community, and identify what is not righteous, what is not holy, and what is ungodly in the eyes of God. As Paul tells us in Romans 12:9, love must be completely sincere. Hate what is evil, hold on to what is good.' The darnel grows alongside the wheat, and it is truly harvest time; hiding among the Godly but bearing no fruit in its due time.

Evil and sin tend to hide themselves while preaching tolerance until they become dominant in our lives and societies. Little changes are made over time until the desired results are achieved. This too applies to the sin we continue to commit in our own lives and make allowance for. Only until the soul seeks freedom from it do we realise that it is in total bondage to it.

Look at the people who asked Jesus to depart from them in Mark 5 once their pigs had run from the cliff and the well-known demoniac was set free. They would have rather that evil was left alone in the background of their town and their lives while not impacting their livelihoods as opposed to meeting Jesus and accepting him fully. We are in a time when it really can't be both ways anymore. Jesus lives. The Lord reigns. What is in the dark will be brought to the light and exposed, and met not with tolerance, niceness, or weakness, but with righteous love and righteous justice.

I would encourage us all not to hide from God or to live a life with our backs turned to him because of our sin or past experiences and feel that his love and his mercy do not apply to you. It absolutely does apply to you. And we must all pass through his doors of infinite mercy before we pass through the doors of judgment. Lay it all down, cast our burdens upon him, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light.