Treating God Like a Sinner [Or, I Still Don’t Get How Good He Is] (Luke 6:32-36)

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do what is good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.”

Love your enemies. It is a sobering passage, to say the least. If I’m honest, it does more than step on my toes a little – it calls me out, revealing that much of what I call “love” is nothing more than self-interest. But that’s a topic for another time. Right now, I want to jump down a few verses to what I believe is a key to understanding what is often missed about this passage – or, at least what I missed for a long time.

After summing up what it looks like to love your enemies, Jesus tells us what it would mean if we were to live out such love:

“Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is gracious to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

This may sound obvious, but Jesus is telling us that he wants us to love like this because this is exactly how God the Father loves. When we love like this we are living as God’s children because that is how he loves. Jesus came to show us what the Father is really like, to correct our misguided notions about him. I think this is one of those moments.

When I come to this passage, I usually read it, feel depressed about the lousy quality of my love, and determine to try harder. I focus exclusively on what it says about how I love or don’t love. What I rarely do is focus on what this says about how God loves. And I rarely think about whether or not I am interacting with God as he presents himself. Instead, I tend to treat God as if he plays by our rules.

How often do we live as if God is the embodiment of everything this passage says is not love?

• As if God only loves those who love him?
• As if God is only good to those who are good to him?
• As if God only gives to us when he expects us to do something for him in return?

Even sinners do this, and yet too often we treat God as if his love is no better. Listen to the subtle implications of conversations you hear around you (and inside your own mind) and tell me this isn’t true.

We tend to believe that if we do the things God likes, he will do nice things for us, but if we do the things God doesn’t like, then he will do bad things to us. I know it seems that way sometimes. That’s why we try to bargain with God. That’s why, too often, we try to impress God with our goodness. That’s why we hide from him when we’ve sinned.

Now don’t get me wrong – there are blessings for living in tune with God, and there are consequences for disconnecting ourselves from him, but the point is this: yes, God blesses the faithful, but, astonishingly, God also blesses the unfaithful!

In Matthew’s version of this passage, Jesus says that God causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall, not just to benefit the good, but the evil as well. It is as if God can’t contain himself! He is so full of love for us – all of us – that he just keeps pouring out good things all around us, knowing that most won’t even lift their heads to thank the source from which their blessings come. What a gift to God, then, to thank him for his gifts! But even if we don’t, that doesn’t change his love – it just keeps overflowing like the sun spilling over the horizon, like the rain bursting from the sky onto parched and thirsty ground.

He just gives, and gives, and gives…

And his giving only fills him with more to give!

What if I lived like that?

What if I lived as if God really loves me like that?

I wonder if all this trying to be better would be replaced with streams of living water flowing – overflowing – from within. I wonder if I would love because he first loved me.