Jesus' Love

I read a quote earlier on Facebook and it really made me think. Here it is: 

"Jesus loves pagans and witches a lot, it's just unfortunate that sometimes we don't." -Furious Love

I think that as Christians we believe that we cannot associate with people who are not. Too many people think we should only be around other Christians. Yes, it is important to spend time with fellow believers, but that doesn't mean we cannot love non Christians. 

Did Jesus only hang out with the apostles? Of course not, and if you think He did you might want to read the Bible again. 

¹³ Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. ¹⁴ As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
¹⁵ While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. ¹⁶ When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
¹⁷ On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:13-17. 

God loves each one of us the same, Christian or not. John 3:16 doesn't say, "For God so loved the Christians that He gave his one and only son." God so loved THE WORLD. All of it! Sometimes I think Christians have been Christians so long that they have forgotten they weren't born that way. There was a time before we were saved. For some of us it may have been a longer time than others. 

We have gotten so wrapped up in our outward appearance and what others think we have forgotten about what God thinks.  How would you feel if your fellow church members caught you having lunch with the town drunk? How would you feel if I told you God sees you with the town drunk?

Jesus hung out with the outcasts, the people everyone had pushed out the door. He loved them, just as He loved the apostles, and how He loves us. We should love others by thinking about how God loves them. What does He see beyond the "broken" outside of those people? 

Stop adding more to the walls of your building and start taking the church to the broken. If we are not bringing more people to Jesus we might as well burn the building down! We need to leave the walls around us and love the people we don't think deserve it, because I promise you, they do. And they may need it more than you'll ever know. We need to stop judging people from the outside and get to know their heart. 

Love them in the same way Jesus does. 

Until next time...John 13:34-35