We are currently living in a culture that is constantly preaching a message of love. Being a follower of Christ you might assume that I would be wholeheartedly behind this, but nothing could be further from the truth. Now let me make this clear, I am wholeheartedly in support of preaching the message of Christ’s love, but I need to make it equally as clear that this is not the message the world and culture are preaching. When the culture preaches love what it really means is tolerance. And what it mean by tolerance is not the actual definition of that word – recognizing and respecting another person’s beliefs – but rather the complete acceptance of another person’s beliefs or worldview at the expense of your own personal beliefs, convictions, and worldview. This is what they mean by love and if you do not conform to their definition you will quickly learn that they are not very loving in return. You will discover that this culture that preaches “love” and “tolerance” is actually quite unloving and intolerant itself.
Not only is this the dominant message of the culture, but it is slowly creeping into the church as well. Instead of shining the radical light of the gospel of Christ, the church has largely bowed its knee to the shifting winds of popular opinion. Sex before marriage and living with your boyfriend/girlfriend? That’s no longer sinful. Divorce? Of course that’s ok. Why are we even talking about it anymore? Drunkenness? What’s wrong with having a little fun anyway? Homosexuality? Who are we to keep people apart who love each other? At each point, the church in America has largely abandoned any semblance of standing upon the truth of God’s Word on these issues. And sadly, even when we have stood for truth we have often been unloving in the way we do so. But both abandoning truth in the name of love and abandoning love in the name truth is damnable. Rather, Scripture calls us to a loving intolerance and as I pray you’ll soon see, this love is far greater than anything this world has to offer.
To show this from Scripture I’m going to go to Romans 13. Of course, this is really the message of the whole Bible, but we’ll just focus on this one passage for now.
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
(Romans 13:8-10 ESV)
Paul makes clear here that the whole law of God is about love. If you wanted to sum up the commands of God in four words it would simply be “Love God. Love others.” This is essentially what Jesus says when he was asked what is the greatest commandment in Matthew 22:35-40. Now our culture likes to rip this from it’s context in order to justify it’s sinful behaviors. The issue of homosexuality is a prime example. If God is a God of love and if Jesus loves everybody than homosexuality should be accepted as morally legitimate. Because love has been redefined as tolerance and tolerance as complete acceptance, rejection of homosexuality is immediately construed as unloving, intolerant, and even homophobic. Now I will be the first to admit that there have been cases where all three of those have been true in regards to Christianity’s response to this issue, but I will also submit to you that a follower of Christ will be lovingly against sin, whether it be homosexuality, sex before marriage, divorce, greed, lying, etc., both in their own lives and in the lives of others. Let’s read further in Romans 13 to see the truth of this.
Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
(Romans 13:11-14 ESV)
A true follower of Christ will cast off works of darkness (sin). They will put on Christ, that is put on faith in his grace offered to us that he doesn’t count our sin against us but counts his own goods works as our own. Out of love they will desire that others do the same. This means calling people to cast off their sexual immorality (whether it be same-sex or opposite sex), drunkenness, anger, worry, jealousy, greed, etc. There is no room for any kind of tolerance against sin. In fact, nothing could be more unloving than tolerating sin. This does not mean that Christians are hateful and it does not give the Christian any license to be hateful. As I said before there has been Christian responses to homosexuality that have been unloving, intolerant, and truly homophobic but the culture is dead wrong in asserting that this is always the case. As we see in Romans 13, when sin is being cast off,
when Christians are intolerant of their own sin and of the sin of others, they are actually displaying a truer, purer love than the world could ever know apart from Christ. They are displaying the truth that love is indeed intolerant.
Word Play 