How we treat other people, you and I, is the most powerful witness of who Jesus is in our lives. Treat them well, and they have every chance of experiencing His love first hand. Treat them badly, and they may never, ever, ever … come to know Him.

Kindness is a much underrated quality these days. Sure, we love it when other people are kind toward us in a world that seems to be moving ever faster, where things appear to be getting more and more transactional. In a world where people are retreating into digital, electronic friendships rather than real ones, yeah kindness when we experience it really stands out.

When you hear that word kindness, you know exactly what it means; no definition required, right? But exactly what is it? Well, it’s being nice to other people, surely. Hang on but which people? Because it’s ever so easy to be kind to the people who are nice to us but a dictionary tells me that kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate. Great, and I’m sure that there are people in your life toward whom you find it incredibly easy to be kind quite simply because they’re kind to you in return.

But what about the difficult people in your life? Conflict lies all around us and it’s conflict, in all its forms, that robs us of our peace and joy because we’re quite simply not made to be in conflict all the time. Ask anyone would you rather have peace or conflict? Well, you know the answer. So let me ask you again, what about those difficult people in your life?

Here’s what Jesus had to say on this very thing. Luke chapter 6, verse 35:

Love your enemies, do good and lend expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great and you’ll be children of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 

God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, eh? Well, he is. In fact he’s been kind over and over again toward you and me. Even when we’ve been ungrateful, even when we’ve done the wrong thing, even when we’ve been wicked over and over and over again. Love your enemies, then. Do good to them, lend to them, be to them just as God has been to you: kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. Why? Well it always bring peace? No, not always although it will substantially increase the chances of peace.

Think about those times when you’ve been acting like a fool and the person you’ve been hurting turns around and responds to you in kindness. Nine times out of ten it’s enough to disarm any sense of hostility you may have had in your heart, right? And whilst that won’t always happen, what will happen is that God will notice. God will see you and your reward from him will be great.

Like I said, kindness is such an underrated quality these days yet it has the power to bring peace and blessing to your life. But it’s hard to be kind when you have bitterness and anger in your heart.

One of the things that God’s word talks an awful lot about is what’s going on in our hearts, in your heart and in mine. There’s a reason for that. The heart is the seat of our emotions and when we have bad stuff happening in there, deep on the inside, we can’t help it, it bubbles to the surface. We end up speaking and acting that bad stuff out. So it’s easy for me to say to you be kind to other people. It’s easy to say but it’s incredibly difficult to do with anger and bitterness bubbling away in your heart.

Might I ask you today: who do you feel angry towards right at this moment in your life? Whose words or deeds have hurt you and left a root of bitterness in your heart? Toward whom have you hardened your heart in a defensive response against that pain? Because today I’m believing that God wants to set you free from that as only He can by his spirit and his word. Are you ready? Ephesians chapter 4, verses 31 and 32:

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice and be kind to one another. Tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.

It’s quite a list there of destructive emotions: bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander and malice. And if I said to you today: put them away, get rid of them, let me tell you it wouldn’t make an iota of difference in your life. But today, right here and now it’s not me that’s saying it, it’s God through his word and he, he has the power to help you to do exactly that.

When God speaks through his word as he is here, through Ephesians chapter 4, verses 31 and 32, when the Holy Spirit lifts that word off the page and writes it on your heart, He gives you the power you need to change. More power, in fact, than you’ll ever need.

So friend, take his word into your heart right now. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice and be kind to one another, tender hearted. Forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. Replace all those negative emotions with a tender heart, as soft heart, a heart that feels and loves and gives. Just as God in Christ through His terrible suffering has forgiven you.

Because armed with a tender, gentle, kind, forgiving heart, you can change lives with God’s love. Armed with a tender, gentle, kind, forgiving heart, you can build bridges of peace, bridges into hurting, desperate lives that one day, one day, Jesus will walk across. Be tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Chris has forgiven you.

It’s one thing to talk about kindness and tender heartedness. They’re good things but words are cheap. A little bit of kindness here and there can be an incredibly powerful thing. When someone’s having a bad day and you come along with a word of encouragement it can light up their whole world.

But if all we ever do is speak, well it starts to wear just a little bit thin after a while because sometimes people need a helping hand and there’s nothing quite as powerful as doing love. Not just speaking it but doing it in a practical way, right into someone’s area of need. Actions, as they say speak louder than words. That powerful truth played itself out on the cross on Calvary 2000 years ago. 1 John chapter 3, verses 16 and 17:

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us. And so we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or a sister in need and yet refuses to help?

We know that God loves us not just because he says he does but because through Christ’s incredible suffering on that cross, we know he does. As a direct result of that sacrificial love that God poured out through the suffering of Jesus for you and me, you and I are called to lay down our lives for one another.

That implies sacrifice, that implies suffering. It’s not always convenient to lay down your life for someone else, in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s rarely if ever convenient or comfortable to lay down your life for someone else. And then, just to remind us that we’re not talking about some lofty theory here, the Holy Spirit guided the apostle John to bring it down to our level, to apply it practically to our lives and to our relationships.

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need yet refuses to help?

The more economically developed a society becomes, the more self-sufficient we become, the less likely we are to help one another in practical ways. In places where life is an economic struggle, look people routinely help one another in practical ways because they have to to survive. But the wealthier we become the less likely we are to help.

Who, in your circle of family, friends, work colleagues or acquaintances needs practical help, today? A child minded, a lift down to the chemist to pick up a prescription, a lawn mowed, and yes, even some money to make the next car payment.

Actions speak the love of Christ into people’s lives, far more powerfully than words.

When it comes to life skills that really make a difference, knowing how to listen, how to shut up and how to speak the truth – well, I think that they would have to be right up there in the category of absolute essentials. So why is it that so often, we get this so wrong?

Now when it comes to life skills that really make a difference, knowing how to listen, how to shut up and then when to speak the truth, well I think that they would have to be right up there in the category of absolute essentials. So why is it that so often we get this so wrong?

Isn’t it just the most amazing thing when somebody actually takes the time to stop and listen to what you have to say? I don’t mean that they stop talking just long enough to figure out the next thing that they’re going to say, I mean when someone actually takes the time to listen to you and really understand what it is that you’re trying to get across.

I have to confess, I am not naturally a good listener. I’m born to talk, to do what I’m doing right now. As a brash young IT consultant I used to think that communication was all about me talking and showing other people how clever I was. Fortunately, I had a mentor, a man 20 years my senior who took the time to teach me the incredible power of listening.

It’s something, by the way, that I’m still learning and I suspect that many of us need to keep working on it because listening, stopping, taking the time to understand someone else even if you don’t agree with them, is one of the most important, the most powerful, life skills that we can ever learn. James chapter 1, verse 19:

You must understand this my beloved, that everyone be quick to listen but slow to speak.

We live in a world where the exact opposite is true. Whether it’s face-to-face or on social media, everybody it seems is talking but very few are actually listening.

Recently a good friend of mine in his 80s passed away and his widow asked me to take his funeral service. I was sitting with her, her daughters and the funeral director in their home planning the funeral and for the most part I just listened. At this point I quietly gave thanks to my mentor who all those years before had taught me the power of just listening. There were times in that two hours or so where frankly I thought they could have made up their minds much more quickly about this detail or that, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about me, it was about them, their grieving process and the way they wanted to say farewell to their husband and father.

I noticed too that even though she had a job to do, the funeral director was an incredibly good listener. I walked away from that time feeling so privileged at having been able to be there and just listen to them talk. Come on, it’s a privilege to hear what’s going on in someone else’s heart. And it so honours the other person, it shows them such respect when we simply sit down, shut up and take the time to listen.

Let everybody be quick to listen and slow to speak. But of course listening isn’t something that comes naturally to many people.

Most of us, I think, are uncomfortable with silence. We think that in order for the conversation to flow somebody needs to be talking and if nobody else is we’d better say something. Anything will do, just something to get rid of that uncomfortable silence.

How often have you stupidly blurted something out just to break the silence? Pretending that you know about something that really you have no idea about? We’ve all been there and the people around you don’t know whether to laugh or just be embarrassed for you. The more we speak, our thinking goes, the more knowledgeable it makes us look. When in reality the exact opposite is true. Along with the skill of listening, the skill of simply being silent is one of the most important life skills that we can ever learn. Proverbs chapter 17, verses 27 and 28:

One who spares his words is knowledgeable; one who is cool in spirit has understanding. Even fools who keep silent are considered wise; when they close their lips they are deemed intelligent.

At this point, I’m reminded of the young man by the name of Ben with whom I’ve been working recently. He’s an expert in social media and digital communications. And of all the people I’ve met in my life, he more than anybody embodies this scripture. I recall we were in a meeting with some web developers planning something new. I jump here and ask a question there, share a thought. The head developer asked Ben whether he had any questions. ‘No’, he said, “I’ll just wait”. He sat there without saying anything for quite a while, observing, thinking, listening. But when he did open his mouth, his few words displayed a wisdom and an insight well beyond his years. Instead of being keen to impress he was very much cool in spirit, calm, measured. Let me tell you, very, very impressive.

At what point did we start thinking that talking was the most important part of communicating? At what point did we begin to imagine that battling on about things that we really don’t understand, showing off with our many words, was the way to impress other people? This proverb is spot on. The one who speaks fewer words ultimately comes across as the more knowledgeable one and even the fool when he sits silent appears to be wise.

In a world where everybody’s trying to put their best foot forward, where so many people are trying to impress us with what they have to say, silence, knowing when not to speak, is more important than ever.

The Bible is full of life skills, essential life skills. And these skills are very rarely taught explicitly in our upbringing. We’re meant to pick them up I think by osmosis. But God doesn’t leave these things to chance. One to spares words is knowledgeable; one who is cool in spirit has understanding. You’ve no doubt heard that old saying: we have two ears and one mouth so we should use them in the same proportion. In other words we should listen about twice as much as we speak. It’s a good adage that remains every bit as true today as it was back when the pace of life and the pace of communication were much slower.

But when we do finally speak, when we do open our mouths having listened and understood other people, what should we say? Well, let’s start with another question. What do people usually say? In my experience it’s one of two things. They either tell me what they want me to hear or what they think I want to hear.

All too often people are pushing their own agendas so they tell us what they want us to hear, trying to get us to agree with them. That’s why the shop attendant invariably tells you that you look fantastic in that item of clothing you’ve just tried on because what they want is the sale.

Other times they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear, to butter you up and gain favour that they can call upon at a later time because frankly, telling someone something that they don’t want to hear often doesn’t get good results. It’s awkward, uncomfortable and often time leads to conflict. So when you open your mouth what should you be telling people? Ephesians chapter 4, verses 14 and 15:

We must no longer be children tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. 

What should we be telling people? Answer: we should be speaking the truth in love. Not what we want them to hear to get them to agree with us and not what they want to hear to curry favour with them, but the truth. And not the truth in a rude, confrontational, disrespectful way. The truth delivered that way will rarely be accepted, even though it is the truth. No, we’re called to speak the truth in love with kindness, with gentleness, with the other person’s interests at heart.

The older I get the more I find myself looking for people who’ll tell me the truth. I want to know what they really think, what they really feel. I want to be dealing in the facts that will help me to make the best decisions even when the facts happen to point out one of my weaknesses, mistakes or faults. I respect that. What should we be saying when we speak? The truth, in love.

The more electronic, the more digital, the more transactional this world becomes, the greater is the temptation to treat everyone the same. But we’re not all the same. We’re all different. Very, very different.

One of the things that’s incredibly precious to each one of us is our own name. It’s an odd thing when you think about it. I mean, a name is just a label; it’s a unique identifier, but if that’s all that there was to it, we could just have a number. Why don’t we change your name to 7449018? ‘G’day, 7449018! How are you?’ It just doesn’t have the same ring about it, does it?

And there’s a reason for that. Our name speaks something of our uniqueness into this world, and so we become incredibly attached to our names. I love the fact that my name is Berni; B e r n I with no e on the end, because that’s how my parents spelt it, and that’s how it is. I often find myself telling people when they’re writing down my name, ‘There’s no e on the end.’ Why? I mean, does it really matter? Well, actually yes, it does matter to me, just as your name matters to you

Think about this: God knows you by name. Isaiah 43:1:

But now, thus says the LORD; He who created you, o Jacob, He who formed you, o Israel: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, and you are Mine.’

When God thinks of you, He thinks of you by name. When He looks at you, He sees you and He knows your name. When you’re in trouble (in distress) and you cry out to Him, He knows your name. Jesus put it beautifully in John 10:2-3:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice; he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Imagine, then, how it feels for someone else when you forget their name: When you’ve met them once, and then you see them again, and you just don’t remember their name. That person’s name is one of the single-most precious things they have, just as your name is one of the single-most precious things that you have, and when we remember other people’s names, it so honours them. It speaks to them of the respect that we have for them.

Honestly, I sometimes struggle to remember people’s names. I travel round the world and meet many, many people, so for me, it’s really quite an occupational challenge, but as best I can, I try to remember their names. I enlist help from our local staff to coach me, and to remind me of people’s names.

God remembers us by name. That’s incredible! God Himself knows your name. How does that make you feel? So imagine the power of remembering and using the names of the people you meet. What a life skill! And imagine building on that and treating each person, interacting with each person, building a relationship with each person, based on who they really are.

It’s tempting, you know, to treat everyone the same, as though somehow we are all the same. Let’s face it: By and large, our default position is that everyone sees things the way we do; everyone experiences things the way we do. Of course in theory, we know that’s not true, but in practice, that’s pretty much how we behave.

And when people don’t see things the way we want them to, when they don’t react to things the way we expect them to … well, we respond with surprise, with annoyance and oftentimes, in anger. Just as everybody has their own unique name, so everyone has their own specific God-given gifts. They tend to see things (just as, in fact, we do) through the lens of those gifts, and through the lens of their experience: The good things they’ve been through, and the bad things as well.

Come on. What makes us imagine for one moment that people all see things the way we do? And why is it that we’re so surprised when they don’t? God’s Word is pretty clear on this. Romans 4:4-6:

For as in one body we have many members, and not all members have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another. We have gifts that differ, according to the grace given to us.

Take a look at any roomful of people: Thirty, forty, a hundred, a thousand, and what you’ll notice is that other than the odd pair of identical twins, everybody looks different; different hair-colours, styles, eye-colour, complexion, the way they dress, the way they talk, and even the identical twins when you get to know them are often quite different.

So imagine … I mean just imagine … if we started working, living, interacting with people, building relationships with people, on the basis that everyone’s actually different, rather than everyone being the same; on the basis of getting to know them – their likes and their dislikes; their strengths and their weaknesses, even in just the little things. Some people don’t like to be rushed, so don’t rush them. Some people like to be punctual, so when you’re catching up with them, be on-time.

Imagine if you took the time to figure out what makes people tick: Your wife, your husband, your children, your brothers, your sisters, your work-colleagues. Imagine how differently you’d be able to interact with them if you knew just these two things about them: The one thing that annoys them most, and the one thing that they find the most pleasing. Do you think that would improve your relationships? Do you think it’d bring more peace and joy to your life? It’s not rocket science. God made everyone to be different, and it’s time to start treating them that way.

The lines between right and wrong have become quite blurred these days. Black and white are being pushed out, and there seems to be a big area of grey there in the middle. But right is still right. Wrong is still wrong. The question is, how do you live that truth out, in your relationships, in a world that prefers different shades of grey.

God is a God who rewards the good in us. It’s a really simple fact. Like any good father, He wants to see His children live a good life. I know that’s what I want for my children. Yeah, I want to see them succeed in their chosen profession, but more than that, I want them to be good people: People with good morals; honest; decent; hardworking; loving; caring for others. And like any father, when they were growing up, I tried to teach them those things. It didn’t always go that well.

Kids being kids, they didn’t always get things right and as you well know, as teenagers, they often pushed the boundaries as teenagers do. And as an imperfect father, I didn’t always get things right either, just quietly. But what was in my heart for them was to bring them up to be good people, and the best way as a parent to do that was to reward the good behaviour in them; to teach them that good behaviour, unselfish behaviour, honest and decent behaviour, has its rewards. I think that approach is pretty common to all fathers, even if (as I’ve said) we don’t always get it right, and in fact, that’s exactly the approach God takes with us. Galatians 6:9:

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time if we don’t give up.

So what God’s saying to us here is, yes, sometimes the going does get tough, but hang in there. Keep on doing good because one day, at harvest-time, you’re going to reap the reward that He has ready and waiting for you. God blesses and rewards the good in us. That’s why Jesus said (John 12:26):

Whoever serves Me, the Father will honour.

In a world in which people more and more are preferring fifty shades of grey to simple black-and-white, you know, I think that’s not such a bad model. It’s so easy to take the good in people for granted when all along, the good in other people is really a blessing from God that could and should be rewarded in a way that encourages more good in this world.

Just think for a moment how powerful-an agent of change the rewarding of good would be in your life, through your life. Think of the missional impact that the rewarding of good could have through you, as you implement God’s approach – God’s model of reward, and the rewards don’t have to be all that big: A simple, “Thank you. I so appreciate what you did,” will often suffice. So who in your life is doing good? Who could you reward today to encourage them to do more good? Because that’s the model that God has ordained.

Of course, not everyone is good all the time. Sometimes people are downright evil. The question is, so then what?

By and large, the simplest thing to do when someone is doing something wrong, something that we know is bad, something that quite clearly is going to have terrible consequences, is … well, just to ignore it.

My wife and I were recently at a café having a quiet cup of coffee or at least, we were trying to. At the next table was a young mother on her mobile phone, chatting away. Opposite her was her one-year-old with a cup in his hand, banging it hard and loud on the table. Now back in my day, I would have taken that cup off him, and taught him that that was the wrong thing to do, even though it probably would have resulted in a tantrum. They have to learn, right? And the sooner the better because one day, that one-year-old is going to be a teenager and then, watch out! But not this mum. No, she simply ignored the child’s bad behaviour and apparently oblivious to it, just kept on talking on her mobile phone. How that cup didn’t smash in his hand I’ll never know.

This ignoring of bad behaviour thing starts quite early-on, and because dealing with bad behaviour takes energy – because it’ll probably cause conflict along the way, we’ve all become quite adept at turning the blind eye; at ignoring it, hoping it’ll go away, but that’s generally not what happens. When we ignore bad behaviour, whether it’s in a one-year-old at the café or in a work-colleague who’s bullying someone, it almost always gets worse, so what’s the answer? What do you do? How do you deal with that bad behaviour? Galatians 6:1:

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.

In other words, God’s calling us to deal with it. God’s calling us, albeit in a spirit of gentleness, to confront the bad behaviour with the aim not of exacting revenge, but of restoring the person who’s doing bad; with the aim of bringing them back to good behaviour.

Now that bit about doing it in the spirit of gentleness is really important. If that young mother had put the phone down and screamed at the child in frustration … well, that probably wouldn’t have been the right approach, any more than you or I responding angrily (with revenge in our hearts) to someone who’s doing us wrong.

Take care that you yourself are not tempted into that, but when we do it in love, when we do it with gentleness, when we point out the mistake quietly and offer a better alternative to the person who’s behaving badly, something surprising happens. God shows up. God honours that, and more often than we might expect, that person who’s been behaving badly is restored to good.

But that doesn’t always work, so then what?

People behaving badly in this world is simply a fact of life. We can try and do the right thing; we can try and talk about it to them gently, quietly, privately, to restore them to good behaviour, but let’s be honest: It doesn’t always work. It should; we wish it did, but it doesn’t always work, so then, what do you ordinarily do in that situation?

Let’s say you tried once or twice to help someone deal with their bad behaviour, but they haven’t responded well. What happens next? Well, most of us, we just give up. ‘Well, you know, I tried, but he’s a hopeless case. He’s never going to change.’ Sound familiar? Sure it does. We just write them off and move on, leaving the bad behaviour to fester and harm not just them, but everybody around them. I’m not so sure that’s the best approach. What do you think? Have a listen to the apostle Paul’s advice to his young ministry protégé, Timothy. 2 Timothy 4:1B-2:

I solemnly urge you, proclaim the message. Be persistent, whether the time is favourable or unfavourable. Convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching.

In a nutshell, the older, more experienced Paul is saying to young Tim here, ‘Don’t give up. Keep telling people about Jesus – the good news, the fantastic news about Jesus, whether the conditions are favourable or unfavourable.’ Does that mean shoving religion down someone’s throat? I don’t think so, but what it does mean is not giving up on them.

I have a very good friend who knows that some of the things that he’s doing are wrong. The lifestyle that he’s chosen for himself is just wrong, plain and simple. Now I care deeply for him, and so on the odd occasion, I’ve shared with him the good news of Jesus and by the way, deep in his heart, I know he believes, but his lifestyle is pulling him away from the Lord. He can’t have his cake and eat it too, as the saying goes.

As much as I care for him though, the one thing that I will not do – the one thing that I will never do – is endorse his bad choices; tell him that it’s all ok, because whether the time is favourable or not, my heart is to convince and rebuke and encourage him with as much patience as I can muster, and of course to pray for him, because there’s such incredible power in prayer. James 5:16b:

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

People are going to behave badly, but don’t give up on them. Perhaps God’s put you in their lives for a time such as this to be the one through whom His love, His grace, His mercy, flows into their lives. Don’t give up.

When people out there are behaving badly, our instinct, more often than not, is to close ourselves off from them. To build a wall, to harden our hearts. Hmm. Just as well that’s not the way God treats us, don’t you think?

Can I ask you today just to picture the face of the person who’s causing you the most grief, the most pain, the most problems in your life right at the moment? Ok. Do you have their image in front of your eyes? So now let me ask you: Yesterday, how did you respond to that person, in your heart, in your mind? What thoughts have been running through your head about them? What scenarios? What responses? What reactions have been playing themselves out over and over again in your head, and in your heart? How do you feel about that person right now?

I’m guessing that there are a few answers there that you’re probably not all that comfortable with. Perhaps those questions have taken you to a place where you’d rather not be because when people sin against us, we harden our hearts towards them and close off our lives, so (and here’s my final question for you today) how did Jesus react to exactly those same people? Matthew 9:9-10:

As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ Then he got up and followed Him. And as He sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came, and with sitting with Him and His disciples.

Tax collectors were the scum of the earth back in those days. They were fellow-Jews who’d colluded with Roman authorities to exhort exorbitant tolls from people who passed by their tax collection booth on the road. So not only did they collude with the enemy who occupied and oppressed their land, they lined their own pockets at the very same time. No wonder they were hated and despised!

But Jesus, instead of shunning them, invited one of them to become one of His disciples and then … Then He went and had dinner with a bunch of these sinners, with the very same people who were hated and shunned by good, God-fearing Jews. Read on, and you discover He copped quite a bit of criticism for that, but His take on it was that it was exactly the people like them that He’d come to this earth to save, and let me be blunt here: If you believe in Jesus, if you claim to follow Him, it’s exactly for people like these that God has put you on this earth – to share the love of Christ with them so that perhaps, some of them will be saved.

So back to that one person I had you picturing a moment ago: Your most difficult person, your tax collector if you will. It’s that person to whom Jesus has sent you. Be open. Be engaging. Show them the love that Christ has shown you, and the easiest way to get started in doing that is to look for the good in them.

When someone’s treating you badly, and you want to write them off because they’re just too much trouble, and they’re more than you can cope with right now, I want to encourage you to do something radical. Are you ready?

Try looking for the good in them because let me tell you, no matter how badly someone’s behaving, deep-down, there’s always some good in them. That’s exactly what Jesus did when He went to dine with the sinners and the tax collectors at Matthew’s house. Matthew 9:11-13:

When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with the tax collectors and the sinners?’ But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what it means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinners.’

Where others saw only sin, Jesus saw something worth redeeming. Jesus knew that if only these sinners, these social rejects, could experience the love of God first-hand, then the good in them would come to the surface. So often, the people who behave badly do so because they’ve never experienced unconditional love in their lives. No one’s ever stepped into their lives looking for the good in them, and helped them to rediscover that good that they thought had been lost forever.

I’m here with you today because when I was one of those bad people, some of those who call themselves Christians stepped into my life, as Jesus did in the lives of these tax collectors and sinners, and they believed somewhere deep-down inside me, hidden though it may have been to their sight, that there was some good in me worth redeeming. All too often, we approach people like those tax collectors and those sinners with the attitude of, ‘Well, what’s in it for me? How will they treat me? What will I experience? Will they hurt me again? What will other people say about me?’ It’s always with this me, me, me thing. Have you noticed? And yet Jesus had no thought whatsoever about what was in it for Him.

The religious leaders, the religious powerbrokers of the day, the ultra-conservative, legalistic, rule-based Pharisees, they criticised Him. ‘Why does He mix with all those undesirables?’

“Because I came to heal the sick,” said Jesus. “Because I came for them; because these sinners are made in the very image of God, and I’m here to show them mercy.”

We can go to church; we can sing the songs; we can hear the sermons; we can pat ourselves on the back, but let me tell you, unless and until we look for the good in the sinner, we’re just kidding ourselves.

The thing about the unconditional love of God is that it’s proactive. God stepped out of heaven, in the person of Jesus Christ, while we were still sinners. He didn’t wait for you and me to clean up our act. He didn’t sit back, like the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, and judge and criticise us.

God looked down on the likes of you and me and said “Hey, they need help. I’m going to do something about this.”

Of course, that was no surprise to Him. He didn’t wake up one day, shocked, at the sin that was ruining humanity. The sin that was ruining your life and mine. From before the beginning of time, He knew, He always knew, that one day, He would have to do something radical for you and for me. Romans 5:6-9:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.

That … that’s what love is. That’s what love does. It doesn’t sit back and wait, love … steps forward and acts. And love is proven in the suffering of Christ, which was decided upon and which happened before you and I ever cleaned up our respective acts. In fact it happened because God knew that without his act of radical love, through Jesus suffering and dying on that cross, you and I would be doomed to the consequences of our sin – here in this life and for all eternity.

And that very same love, that very same proactive; radical; sacrificial love, the sort that steps out in sacrifice, rather than sitting back in criticism, that’s the love that you and I are called to live out in this world. Nothing more and nothing less.

So back to the difficult people in your life; back to the people who are hurting you; back to the people whom you want to reject – we all have those people in our lives, this love that God showed you through Jesus Christ, that’s the love that he is calling you to show them, so that one day they might experience that transformation of meeting Jesus.

Their lives will be changed for all eternity because God put you right there in the middle of their lives.