The Test of Love预览

Remember and Repent

Saint Paul wrote the following to a group of Christians in Corinth who had a similar problem. I’ll paraphrase:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and un­derstand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Back in the early days of their Christian life, the Ephesians had been enthusiastic in love. They were one of the groups that the pagans looked at and exclaimed, “How they love one another!” There was a transform­ing energy that was at work in them. They reconciled enemies, they helped the poor and sick, they wor­shipped with joy—and all their work was brimming with love for their Lord and for their brothers and sisters.

Our Lord examined the Ephesian Christians and had this—abandoning love—against them. He examines us and has the same thing against us. Back in the beginning there was a love affair, remember? Back in those early days, life was dominated by the thought of the God who loved us and gave himself for us. Back in the beginning it was like a honey­moon, a courtship. Remember?

But he didn’t only diagnose. He also prescribed a cure: Remember, repent, and go back to work like when you started out.

Repentance is the resolve to return to those early truths, the first reality, that we felt really secure upon. The days of our history may rust and cor­rode the best realities of our lives, and we need to get cleaned up once in a while. Some changes have to be made. We have to return to what Christ first meant to us.

Heavenly Father, we remember the wonder of Your amazing, all-consuming love. We ask Your forgiveness for having abandoned it for other things.