It Costs To Care!

Listen to this and ask if you’ve heard anything like it on CNN or FOX News or from either candidate in the presidential campaign this past week –  “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore 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.” Beautiful! It smells sweet to God when people live that way, like sweet incense or a nose-pleasing fragrance filling a room! God (metaphorically speaking) has a nose, and it smells good to God when people love and forgive and are kind and caring with each other! Those words are ancient words, now 2,000 years old. And those words are inspired words, written by a holy man (the apostle Paul) who, like the other “holy men of God, wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 4:30-5:2 and 2 Peter 1:21b).

Who can read those words, after yet another week’s headlines of killing and war and unrest in the world, and not realize they are relevant? And it’s not just nations (rattling their sabers and spending huge chunks of revenue on making war machines) that need Paul’s inspired guidelines for life. Nor is it just groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda who spend their time and spin their brains trying to think of ways to blow up people they don’t like. No, closer to home, national news headlines reveal continuous foment and tension between people of different races and faces and spaces and places. And in practically every community, from huge cities to tiny towns, many husbands and wives and families and neighbors build walls and grow cold and do emotional and psychological damage to each other. And sadly, far too often, physical abuse. And then, even down at church, some of the toxic “bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking” Paul spoke of in the passage quoted above walks into the building and plops down on a pew and sings songs and hears prayers and sermons on love and joy and peace and how we ought to be “kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.” And then gets up and walks out the same as it came in, still bitter, still angry, still unwilling to forgive.

So, we all almost instinctively know we ought to care. Why don’t more people imitate God and walk in love and show tenderness and forgiveness?  Why won’t people lay down their weapons of war? Why don’t husbands and wives forgive? Why don’t estranged family members and friends and brothers and sisters in Christ show forgiveness and tenderness and kindness to each other? In short, why don’t more people care more? The real answer is embedded in the text quoted. God the Father and Christ cared enough to be tender and kind and forgiving. Caring that much cost them, greatly. God in Christ forgave us. Christ loved us, the Bible says, and gave Himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God. I find it difficult to believe that felt good to Him, but it smelled good to God and pleased Him.

The depth of His care and concern for us took Him to and held Him on the cross. Are you imitating that? It costs to care.

 Dan Gulley