The Last Exemption

What Is Love? | Day 11

"For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" Romans 5:10, NIV

Good morning. There is a particular kind of person we all keep on a mental list, someone whose name makes us tense up before we even remember why, and this morning we bring that list into the light.

Anyone Can Love a Friend

We have spent this series learning that love is not one word but many, and that the neighbor we are commanded to love has no boundary we get to draw. But there is one more line left to erase, and Jesus draws it out into the open himself. "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" (Matthew 5:46 to 47, NIV) That question stings because it is true. Loving someone who already loves us back costs nothing. It requires no grace, no Spirit, no miracle. Every person on earth, believer or not, manages that much. Jesus is not describing an achievement here. He is describing the bare minimum, and then he asks us plainly whether the bare minimum is really what we thought love meant.

We tend to build our list of exemptions quietly. It is rarely the classic enemy from a storybook, the villain with no redeeming qualities. More often it is the relative who hurt us and never apologized, the coworker whose success we cannot celebrate, the person whose politics or choices or presence in our life feels like a personal offense. We do not usually call these people our enemies out loud. We just find reasons why loving them does not really apply in this particular case. The lawyer earlier in this series wanted to shrink the definition of neighbor. We do the same thing with enemy, just in reverse: we expand the category of people who somehow do not count, until our obligation to love shrinks down to whoever already agrees with us.

None of this is a matter of trying harder. Loving an enemy is not a moral achievement we work up on our own; it is something the Holy Spirit produces in a heart that has already received God's love. Left to ourselves, we will always find a reasonable justification for our exemptions. The list will always feel earned. But the Spirit does not ask us to erase the list through sheer effort. He asks us to let the love we have already been given start moving outward, past the people who make it easy and toward the ones who do not.

Sitting at the Wrong Table

This is where we have to look closely at what Jesus actually did, because it answers a fear many of us carry without saying it out loud. If loving someone difficult means sitting with them, does that mean we are agreeing with everything about their life? Levi, a tax collector despised by his own people for extorting them on Rome's behalf, held a banquet, and Jesus went. "Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, 'Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?' Jesus answered them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.'" (Luke 5:29 to 32, NIV) Notice what Jesus did not do. He did not tell Levi that tax collecting was a fine and respectable trade after all. He did not soften the label sinner into something gentler. He sat at the table anyway, because presence is not the same thing as approval.

We see the same pattern with Zacchaeus, another chief tax collector who climbed a tree just to catch a glimpse of Jesus passing by. "When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, 'Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.' So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, 'He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.'" (Luke 19:5 to 7, NIV) The crowd assumed what many of us still assume, that eating with someone means endorsing them. But look at what actually happened once Jesus was inside that house. Zacchaeus stood up on his own and gave away half of what he owned, promising to repay everyone he had cheated four times over. Presence did not cement Zacchaeus in his sin. Presence became the very thing God used to draw him out of it. Love that stays at the table does not pretend the problem is not there. It simply refuses to let the problem be the last word.

This matters for every one of us carrying someone on that quiet mental list. We are not asked to pretend their choices are fine, and we are not asked to lecture them into agreement before we will be near them. We are asked to be present the way Jesus was present, honest about what is true and patient enough to let that truth work the way only he can make it work. The reason we can do this at all is not because we have found some reserve of goodwill inside ourselves. It is because we were the ones sitting at the wrong table first. Jesus Christ did not wait for us to clean up before he came near. He came while we were still God's enemies, and his presence in our lives has never once required our agreement, only our welcome of him.

Prayer

Thank you, Father, for reconciling me to yourself through your Son while I was still your enemy. Thank you that his welcome of me never depended on me getting one thing right first. Thank you for the patience you showed me long before I understood how much I needed it.

Bring to my mind right now the person I have quietly exempted from my love. Give me the courage to stay present with them in honesty rather than silence, and the humility to remember that I was once exactly where they are. Let your Spirit move that love outward through me today, and do the work in their heart that only you can do. I ask this in Jesus's name. Amen.

There is real relief in learning that presence is not agreement, but a harder question is still waiting for us. Loving someone well eventually means saying something true out loud, and that is exactly where we turn next.

To God be the glory

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

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