Christians Mistake Kind Gestures for the Love of Christ
Christians have a problem: we mistake kind gestures for the Love of Christ. In the process, we trivialize the love of Christ in the eyes of the world.
How many times have we heard an appeal at church that starts with, “Help us show the love of Christ” followed by an invitation to participate in an act of kindness, such as donating food for the local food bank, passing out bottles of water at a marathon, changing oil for widows and single moms, etc.?
Everyone Does Kind Gestures
But there are two problems with this. First of all, kind gestures are not the same as the love of Christ. Secondly, everyone does kind gestures. Both Christians and non-Christians practice acts of kindness. Every major religion in the world emphasizes good deeds. Even thoroughly evil people, like drug lords, do nice things for people they like.
Now I’m not saying kind gestures are wrong and we should stop doing them. On the contrary, we should keep doing nice things for people and even increase them. But at the same time, we need to understand that as Christians, we are called to do far more than just nice things for people. We are called to love people as Christ has loved us.
But Only Christians Love Like Jesus Christ
Everyone does kind gestures. But not everyone loves the way Christ does. In fact, the love of Christ is unique to Christians. Jesus himself said this: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34, 35).
Jesus is saying that His love is so unique and distinctive that when we practice it, people will immediately recognize that they are in the presence of a follower of Christ.
So it’s important for us to distinguish between kind gestures and Christ’s love so that we know when we are doing one and when we are doing the other. Here are five ways to tell the difference between the two.
1. Kind gestures are project oriented, while the love of Christ is relationship oriented.
Kind gestures are things we do for people.
But the love of Christ goes beyond that. It’s something we practice in order to know and relate to people and in order for them to know and relate to us. Christ always sought to establish a relationship with the people he loved. He didn’t just tell Zacchaeus, for example, that he wanted to talk with him. He told Zacchaeus that he wanted to eat a meal with him in his home.
2. Kind gestures are temporary, while the love of Christ is never ending.
Kind gestures are one and done things. We do them and we move on.
The love of Christ, on the other hand, never ends. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
3. Kind gestures are random, while the love of Christ is focused.
“Practice random acts of kindness,” reads the bumper sticker. As the saying says, we can do kind gestures for anyone anytime.
But the love of Christ is different. We can’t love everyone in the world with the love of Christ, but we can love our neighbor with the love of Christ. We can love our wife and children with the love of Christ. We can love our fellow believers at church with the love of Christ.
Even Jesus distinguished between his public ministry, which we read about in John 1-12, and his private ministry with his disciples, which is recorded in John 13-17. The focus of his private ministry was the extent of his love for his disciples. “Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1, NIV).
4. Kind gestures are convenient, while the love of Christ is committed.
We do kind gestures when they fit into our schedule, when we have the energy, and when we have money to spend.
But the love of Christ is committed to the person being loved regardless of the circumstances. A person loving like Jesus takes personal responsibility for someone in need. Listen to Ruth as she expresses this kind of commitment to the widow Naomi:
?Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me? (Ruth 1:16, 17).
5. Kind gestures have little impact on the recipient while the love of Christ transforms the recipient.
It makes our day when someone does something nice for us. But we soon forget the kind deed and move on.
The love of Christ, on the other hand, is a miraculous manifestation of the Spirit of God in our wicked world. ?O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me;I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them? (John 17:25, 26 NASB).
So how does this distinction between doing kind gestures for someone and loving someone with the love of Christ apply to our ministry of serving the widowed and single parents?
When we do project ministry for the widowed and single parents, we are doing kind gestures for them. But when we establish loving relationships with the widowed and single parents, when we show up month after month at their home to serve them, and when we make sure that that widow, widower, single mom or single dad are okay, we are showing them the love of Christ.
The first is a nice thing to do. The second is a godly thing to do.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North America and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt widows, single moms and fatherless children in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church at newcommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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