A CHRISTIAN’S CORE IDENTITY
Luke 6:37-38 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not
condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure,
pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.
For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Writhing
in agony on the cross, Jesus says, “I know every moment of sin, selfishness,
dishonesty, and degraded love that has disfigured your life, and I do not judge
you unworthy of compassion, forgiveness, and salvation. Now you be like that
with others. Judge no one.”
Only when we claim the love of the crucified Christ with
heartfelt conviction, this love that transcends all judgments, can we overcome
all fear of judgment. As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do,
as if we are what we have, and as if we are what other people think about us,
we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations.
We will remain addicted to the need to put people in their place.
Yet to the extent that we embrace
the truth that our core identity is not rooted in our success in ministry or in
our popularity with kids and parents or with power in the local church, but in
the passionate, pursuing, infinite – what G. K. Chesterton called the “furious”
love of God embodied in his crucified Son – to that degree we can let go of our
need to judge our friends, spouses, children, pastors, gays, straights, Asians,
Caucasians, and the sin-scarred wino on the street. We can be free from the
need to judge others by claiming for ourselves the truth, “I am the disciple
whom Jesus loves.”
The
Signature of Jesus, by Brennan Manning, pg. 60.
