Do You Love Jesus?

Do you love Jesus?

AKA. Are you a good Christian?

I am. Just check my daily schedule. You’ll find Jesus there. Well, on some days. I mean, we all have to live our lives, right? So to help ourselves–if you’re like I am sometimes–I’ll be you set some Christian rules to follow, just so you know you’re on the right track. Just to prove how much you love Jesus.

You love Jesus because you:

1. Are a good person (at least better than most other people)

2. Read your Bible (at least the verse on your calendar or your Bible app)

3. Pray (when you’re in trouble)

4. Go to church (when you get up in time–or at least watch it online while you read your emails)

You have an intentional relationship with Jesus. You’re one of the good guys.

Is that how it goes for you? Sometimes, that’s what I make it. This version of loving God makes sense in my normal busy life.

But what if I handled my marriage like I handle loving Jesus? Let’s see how the comparison plays out.

In a marriage, loving my husband means: 

1. Be a better wife than most people

2. Listen to him talk at least a couple minutes a day

3. Tell him how I feel (arguments count)

4. Go on occasional dates and vacations (because that keeps things interesting and gets you out of the house)

Make sense? Well, If this is my strategy, I’ll have a crappy marriage.

If this is my Christian calling strategy, I’ll have a crappy relationship with God. But it won’t be my fault because I did the BIG FOUR (be good, read my Bible, pray, go to church). 

What more could God expect of me? I have a job. I have kids. I have bills and friends and cultural pressures. I have concerns and stress. I have dreams.

I’m not a nun or a preacher, after all. I’m a regular person. How much can I actually adjust my regular life for my spiritual life?

Well, how much should I adjust my regular life for my married life? Are they separate from one another? Can I just check boxes in my marriage and have a beautiful life?

Or perhaps, are marriage and me so intertwined that failure to work at my marriage as a married person means the dissolving of more than a single relationship? Failing to invest in my marriage produces an unraveling of two souls who have promised to become one. It produces the destruction of family units, friendships, households, futures. 

The tricky thing about marriage is that although a good marriage takes two people, it is possible for the marriage to unravel because one person chooses to leave it.

Do you love Jesus? Really?

That’s the big difference in its comparison to the Christian life. Jesus Christ never leaves the relationship. He’s never too busy to listen. He doesn’t take your words the wrong way or misunderstand your motives. He always forgives and doesn’t hold grudges. He doesn’t develop time-consuming hobbies to get space from you. He doesn’t bring up your past offenses. 

He listens without judgment. He loves your company and always wants more, yet he isn’t mad when you don’t show up like you should. He is himself a fellowship of three, a community into which he invites you. He accepts, encourages, forgives, and empowers.

And yet we limit his access to us. We boil down our relationship to minutes, verses, and Sunday mornings.

And we wonder where he is when the world blows up. When we get that frightening diagnosis. When we lose that special person. When we grieve and mourn and question.

Where is he? Why did he leave us?

We forget that only one of us in the spiritual marriage can check boxes instead of pursue intimacy. Only one of us is satisfied with minutes and verses and an hour on Sunday. Only one of us can leave. 

And it’s never Jesus.

When I make any relationship about comparisons and criterion, I lose the relationship and give myself another job.

That’s not love. That’s law.

And that’s not why Jesus died for me.

So instead of loving my husband like I love Jesus, how about the other way around?

What would change in my human relationships if the person I chose to love had:

1. left everything to come to earth and understand my human experience
2. endured persecution and suffering to conquer evil
3. died for me
4. rose again to give me power to resurrect, change, and overcome any powerful darkness in my life
5. established an entire world system for my benefit and blessing
6. given me access to his blessing, power, and protection any time I wanted
7. provided human relationships and experiences to bless me and make me happy
8. given me hope to endure suffering and live victoriously in hardship

So instead of giving me religion (a list of checkboxes or rules to follow), Jesus gives me freedom to love him as much or as little as I want. He remains unchanged in his love for me. He gives me guideline for my safety and principles to live by. He establishes a church so I have Christian fellowship–camaraderie, protection, support (not a club). He gives me grace to fail and try again. He pays the price and bears all the weight of my eternal destiny. And then he lets me choose grace instead of law. Love instead of checkboxes.

What a beautiful way to love someone.

 

“For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” (Galatians 2:18-21)

 

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