Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.
Why do we find it so hard to love as Jesus loved? Each of us, after all, have the Holy Spirit of God inside us, showing us those who need love...directing us in ways to show love to them. But sometimes we find it hard to love, not only strangers and our enemies...sometimes we find our patience tried just trying to show love to our own family and friends.
I would like to suggest to you that the reason we find it so hard to love...and to love much...is that we forget how much God loves us and how much we have been forgiven. This is especially a problem for those of us who grew up in the church and have always been around a fairly sheltered life. Surely, we've had our own troubles or temptations, but sometimes we're tempted to think that we're not actually all "that bad". You know, not like drug dealers or embezzlers or drunks. We're church people. How does God view us "church people", though...the really (self-)righteous?
Isaiah 64:6
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;
(The emphasis added is mine.)
The best that man can do is nothing but filthy rags when compared to God's righteousness and when measured by His standards. However, those of use who feel like we are "forgiven little" somehow take that as a license to love little, too. If we remember that God saved us from a state where we were completely incapable of saving ourself, and if we consider how very awful even our absolute best looked when compared with His holiness, and when we think about the cost that it took to clean those filthy rags in the blood of His very own Son, then we will be humble enough to love other people the way God wants us to love them. We love them because HE loves them, and He is the one that lives in us.
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