Judgment always blocks love

THIS IS ALSO POSTED ON MY NEW BLOG FOUND HERE

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In a previous post I made a public apology for becoming so judgmental in my life. I attribute this new focus on a Gospel of LOVE to many people, including the writings of Gregory Boyd. Here is a wonderful excerpt from this teaching from Gregory Boyd:

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Judgment always blocks love, which is why the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was placed in the middle of the garden. Life as God intends it to be lived revolves around our honoring God’s loving “No trespassing” sign. We are to love like God loves, Genesis 3 is teaching us, not judge like only the omniscient God can judge. When we play God and judge others, we separate ourselves from them and place ourselves over them. And this is the antithesis of love.

Recall, once again, that love is defined by Calvary. Far from separating himself from us, the all-holy God entered into solidarity with us by becoming our sin and taking on our punishment on the cross. Our central task in life as kingdom people is to replicate this. We are to mimic God! Instead of separating ourselves from others and standing over others, we are to come under others, enter into solidarity with others, serve others, ascribe worth to others at cost to ourselves, without any regard for whether they deserve it or not. For this is what God has done for us – while we were yet sinners.

To help us love like this, Jesus teaches us to do the exact opposite of what religion invariably does. Far from maximizing others sins while minimizing our own, we are to maximize our own sin and minimize the sins of others. We are to assume that our sins are tree trunks while theirs are little dust particles (Mt 7:1-3). Whatever you find in another, consider your sin to be much worse! If Christians began to take this teaching seriously, we would be known for our outrageous, nonjudgmental humility rather than for our self-righteous and self-serving tendency to publically “crack down” on other people’s sins.

When we die to getting life from our religious distinctiveness and seek all our worth, purpose and security in Christ alone, we are freed from the need to judge others. We can love them as Christ loved us, just as they are. And now our words may begin to have meaning to them. The claim that God loves them with a Calvary-quality love takes on plausibility as they see this love incarnated in our life. It should never have been otherwise, but our religion has significantly blinded us. Now that the religion is dying, we have the forced opportunity to be freed to be more biblical, more incarnational, more Christ-like, more loving in our evangelism.

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THIS IS ALSO POSTED ON MY NEW BLOG FOUND HERE