Not That Kind of Fence

What Is Love? | Day 10C

"Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst." 1 Timothy 1:15, NIV

Good morning. Over the last two mornings we sat with a lawyer's question to Jesus, "Who is my neighbor," and watched a Samaritan cross paths with a stranger nobody else would touch. This morning we want to close that conversation.

Across those two devotions we discussed how love does not ask whether someone has earned it, and how the fences between neighbors are what Jesus asks us to tear down. Two kingdoms are at work in how we see people. The world has its own kingdom, with its own laws, and when someone breaks them, the world calls the consequence justice, and rightly so. A person who breaks the law may end up behind bars, marked by what they have done. Does love end where the sentence begins? Churches, ours included, carry out prison ministry for this reason. The earthly kingdom has already pursued justice a crime deserved, and that matters. What a prisoner still needs to hear is the love, compassion, and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, the salvation that reaches even behind bars.. The world's kingdom may or may not hold someone accountable, but God's kingdom reaches for that person, offering rescue from the sin that would condemn them. This is the kingdom we meant when we said the fences had come down, not a nation's border or a yard fence, but the fence around the human heart, since Jesus Christ died for sinners, all of us included.

Two Kinds of Boundaries

Scripture has a great deal to say about nations and their boundaries, and none of it treats them as an afterthought. "From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us." (Acts 17:26 to 27, NIV) The same God who made every person determined where and when they would live, so people everywhere would have reason to seek him.

Paul says something similar about the authorities that govern within those boundaries. "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves." (Romans 13:1 to 2, NIV) Lawful government carries real authority because God himself stands behind it. That earthly kingdom is good. The fences we meant were the ones inside our own hearts, the quiet decision to withhold love because of where someone was born, what they have done, or what they have cost us. That fence was never God's design. It was ours to tear down.

Lawbreakers Loved First

Here is the truth this devotion turns on. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23, NIV) None of us stands on the innocent side of some invisible line, looking down at people who broke a law we never broke. James makes the standard even sharper. "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." (James 2:10, NIV) God's law reaches further than any law a government has written, and measured against it, every one of us is a lawbreaker too.

This is exactly the sentence Paul could not get away from either. "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst." (1 Timothy 1:15, NIV) Paul does not soften his own record. He calls himself the worst of sinners, a man who had believers dragged to prison, exactly the kind of person Jesus Christ came to save. We stand on the same ground, sinners loved by a Savior who did not wait for us to deserve it.

Paul makes the same point elsewhere: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8, NIV) God did not wait for us to change before he loved us, and that is the love we owe everyone we are tempted to fence off in our hearts, the lawbreaker, the illegal immigrant, whoever we quietly decide does not deserve it. This does not erase the seriousness of what any law, human or divine, has been broken. Jesus loves the sinner. He does not love the sin. It simply means love was never reserved for the innocent, because none of us qualified. This has nothing to do with this kingdom's laws or borders. It is about the kingdom of heaven, where grace, mercy, and love were shown to us without us ever earning them, and through the same Spirit who first poured that love into our hearts, we are simply asked to pass it along to others.

None of this asks us to pretend that earthly law does not matter. We can support the authority God has given our government while recognizing every lawbreaker who crosses our path is someone Jesus Christ died to save. Our calling was never to overlook what they have done, but to help them see what Jesus Christ has already done for sinners like us. "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:19 to 20, NIV) That command was never limited to people who look, speak, or live like we do, and some of the people we are tempted to write off are within reach of it.

This is what Paul calls the ministry of reconciliation, the clearest picture of how God treats the very lawbreakers we are talking about. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation." (2 Corinthians 5:17 to 19, NIV) God does not count our sins against us in Christ, and now he hands that same ministry to us, an invitation to see them as Jesus Christ already sees them, worth dying for long before they were worth anything else. That is what we were reaching for when we said the boundary of neighbor was gone. Not a policy. A posture of the heart, made possible only because Jesus Christ reached across the same boundary for us.

Prayer

Thank you, Father, for making nations and marking their boundaries with purpose, and thank you even more for the law you wrote on hearts that shows every one of us exactly how far short we fall. Thank you for not waiting until I had earned your love before you sent your Son to find me.

Help me to hold both truths without letting go of either one, that lawful order matters to you and that no label I might place on another person can undo the reach of your mercy. Where I have quietly built a fence around who deserves my love, tear it down, and give me the same posture of heart that met me at the cross before I deserved anything at all. I ask this in Jesus's name. Amen.

We hope this morning brought clarity rather than more confusion, because these are questions worth wrestling with honestly rather than avoiding. Holding truth and a person's worth together, without losing either one, is not always simple, and that is exactly the ground we will keep walking together next.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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