God want us to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ differently from the way that we may have learned to treat people. I am not talking about the things that our parents may have taught us intentionally but the things that they may have taught us unintentionally, the things that we observed them do rather than the things that they said; the things that we picked up from grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, friends, classmates, and other people in our childhood and later in life; the things that we learned for own survival in the environment in which we found ourselves.
God wants us to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ differently from the way the subculture to which we may belong encourages us to treat them. For example, some things that have become acceptable in teen culture such as ganging up on someone on the internet and bullying them, ghosting old friends when they find more exciting or more interesting new friends, are from the perspective of what Jesus taught and practiced not just unkind but they are also cruel. We may do them because we have seen other people in our peer group do them but that does not make them right.
God wants us to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ in accordance with teaching and example of Jesus. Among the reasons that God sent Jesus was to teach and show us how he wants us to treat our neighbors and each other. God is love and he wants us to treat others in loving ways.
Jesus taught us to love God and to love others and to show our love for God by loving others the way God loves us. He taught us to love not just our close family, our kin, and our friends but to love all people. No exceptions. We are even to love those who harbor ill-will against us, who wish us to suffer harm, and who may have done harm to us.
Jesus taught us to treat others the same way that we ourselves would wish to be treated. He taught us to be compassionate, forgiving, gentle, honest, kind, loving, merciful, open-handed, patient, and tender-hearted. While others might not do good to us, we are to do good to them. If they act spitefully toward us, we are not to return their ill-will with spite of our own. We are to turn the other cheek. We are not to seek revenge for any wrong, real or imagined, that someone may have done us.
Jesus taught us that before we do anything else, we are to try to make things right with someone if we have anything against them. We are not to hang onto our anger. Jesus warned us that the evil one will exploit our anger if we hang on to it. The evil one will use our anger to do as much harm as he can. While God desires that we love others; the evil one desires that we hate and despise them.
Jesus taught us to love our brothers and sisters in Christ as he loved us. Out of his love for us Jesus would suffer a painful death on a cross for our sake. It is the same kind of self-sacrificing love that he taught us to show to each other. We are not to quarrel with each other. We are not to hold grudges against each other. We are to be patient with each other. We are to show each other the same merciful kindness that God shows us.
None of this way of treating others—our neighbors or our brothers and sisters in Christ—comes naturally. God, however, provides us with grace to treat others the way that Jesus taught and showed us. God works invisibly in us, enabling us to desire to treat others that way, and when we desire to treat them that way, works with us, enabling us to treat them how Jesus taught and practiced.
For this reason, praying for God’s grace, not just for ourselves, but for others—our neighbors and our fellow Christians, is very important. If we ask for God’s grace, God will not refuse to supply the grace for which we ask. With this knowledge we can act on Jesus’ teaching and example, trusting that God will supply the grace that we need.
It is also important that we recognize that our own willfulness may get in the way of treating others in accordance with Jesus’ teaching and example. God knows that his children can be headstrong and rebellious. We are accustomed to doing things our own way and we do not take kindly to others telling us what to do or drawing to our attention to what may be the negative consequence of what we are doing.
While God normally nudges us gently in the right direction, he has been known occasionally to whack us with a plank to get our attention much in the same way as we might whack the proverbial stubborn mule. God desires that we bring our wills into line with his. He knows that living in harmony with his will is for our own good. When we live in harmony with God’s will, we become fully what God meant us to be.
While God accepts us where we are, he does not leave us there. God works in us to enable us to become more like Jesus, to restore his own image in us, which has become marred by sin.
God wants us to shine like stars in the world, to use the words of the apostle Paul, to show that we are children of the Most High, to use Jesus’ own words. God loves his children. Like any parent God wants them to become the best that they can be. God helps us to be that.
God acts not out of meddlesomeness, but out of his boundless love for us, a love which is so wide, so high, and so deep, that it is beyond our imagining. It is the same love out of which he gave his only Son that all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Whatever lies the evil one may whisper in our ears, God desires only our good. God does not desire us ill. God cherishes us, something that whatever may happen to us, will not change. We are his beloved children whom he treasures. While family, kin, and friends may turn their backs on us and walk away from us, God will not reject or abandon us.
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