Letting Go of Judgment and Learning the Way of Love
There is a particular kind of freedom that comes when we realize we were never asked to keep score of everyone else's life.
Following Jesus is not an invitation into a life of constantly deciding who is right and who is wrong, who belongs and who does not, who is holy enough and who needs to be corrected. The way of Jesus is an invitation into something much more beautiful: love.
It is a life in which we learn to see one another differently. A life in which we become less interested in judgment and more interested in peace. A life in which we discover that the Holy Spirit is not merely giving us more rules to follow, but transforming the way we see.
Paul's words in Romans 14 offer a remarkably freeing vision of Christian community. The early church was filled with people who had very different convictions about food, sacred days, religious practices, and what it meant to live faithfully. Some believed one thing; others believed another. Paul's answer was not to create another list of rules that would settle every disagreement. His invitation was to stop condemning one another.
That may sound simple, but it is deeply spiritual work.
We have been taught, in so many ways, that being certain means being strong. We are often rewarded for being right. We learn to organize the world into categories: good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable, faithful and unfaithful, us and them. We can even mistake the number of rules we keep for the strength of our faith.
But Romans gives us another possibility. Perhaps spiritual maturity does not look like having more rules. Perhaps it looks like having enough freedom in Christ that we no longer need to control our neighbor.
This is where the Holy Spirit does something extraordinary in us. The Spirit changes the way we think. The Spirit opens the inner eye. The Spirit teaches us to see what we could not previously see and to hear the voice of God beneath all the noise. As our consciousness expands, we begin to understand that love is not merely something we feel. Love becomes the way we inhabit the world.
The question becomes less, Am I right? and more, Am I loving?
That is a very different way to live.
Following Jesus Means Letting Go of Judgment
Paul asks a startling question: Who are you to condemn someone else's servant? In other words, beloved, who told us that everyone else's life was ours to manage?
We don't have to carry the responsibility of deciding whether everyone around us is getting it right. We don't have to monitor another person's faith, convictions, practices, or relationship with God. Each person stands before God as beloved.
This does not mean becoming indifferent to harm. Love does not ask us to remain silent when someone is being abused, oppressed, or harmed. Scripture calls us to speak for those who have no voice and to stand with those who are vulnerable. Love protects. Love tells the truth. Love refuses to participate in harm.
But there is a profound difference between confronting harm and living with contempt.
Jesus did not come to teach us how to condemn one another. Jesus came to show us what God looks like. And when we look at Jesus, we see someone who moved toward people rather than away from them. We see someone who ate with people, touched people, listened to people, healed people, welcomed people, and continually expanded the circle of belonging.
The way of Jesus is the way of peace. Peace within ourselves. Peace with our neighbors. Peace with people who do not think as we think.Sometimes the most powerful spiritual practice available to us is simply to bless the person we do not understand.
One of the blessings I return to again and again is this: May they find themselves in the presence of Jesus. What else do we really need to ask for them?
If someone finds themselves in the presence of Jesus, then they are in the presence of love. They are in the presence of mercy. They are in the presence of restoration. They are in the presence of the One who knows them completely.
We can leave the rest with God.
The Freedom of Not Keeping Score
There is another kind of freedom here that I find especially beautiful: you don't have to keep account of anyone else's life.
We already have enough to carry.
We remember passwords, appointments, responsibilities, conversations, bills, birthdays, obligations, and all the countless details of being human. We do not need to add everyone else's failures to the list. The good news is that God has not asked us to.
Every person will give an account of their own life before God. That means I don't have to take account of yours. And you don't have to take account of mine.What would happen if we trusted God enough to release that responsibility? What if we stopped rehearsing what someone else did wrong? What if we stopped collecting evidence against people? What if we stopped needing to prove that we were right?
What if we became compassionate witnesses instead? And beloved, that compassion includes ourselves.
The invitation to stop condemning others is also an invitation to stop condemning ourselves. We can become witnesses to our own lives without becoming prosecutors. We can notice where we need to grow without deciding that we are unworthy of love. We can take responsibility without living under shame.
The voice of condemnation is not the voice of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit calls us toward life. Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly." The invitation is not simply to survive our spiritual lives. It is to become fully alive.
What Would It Mean to Wake Up?
Sometimes I wonder how much of our lives we experience on autopilot.
Have you ever driven somewhere and suddenly realized you don't remember the journey? Your body was driving, but your attention was somewhere else. We can do that with our whole lives. We can move through the days without tasting our food, noticing the people around us, hearing the birds, looking closely at the earth, or allowing beauty to interrupt us.
But creation keeps calling us back.
This is part of why the Season of Creation is so meaningful. The birds are witnesses. The greening earth is a witness. The ocean is a witness. The springs, the trees, the moths, the wind, the water, the astonishing diversity of creation are all invitations to wake up and pay attention. Even when the world looks dark or dormant, life is moving beneath the surface.
Creation reminds us that God is abundant. God is diverse. God is alive. And we are invited to be alive, too.
There is no ordinary encounter when we begin to see through the eyes of love. Every person we meet bears the image of God. There is no disposable person. There is no stranger who is outside the circle of divine love.
The practice of following Jesus is learning to really see.
Love Is the Scaffolding of Our Faith
The Christian tradition gives us practices and rhythms. We gather. We pray. We listen to Scripture. We share communion. We serve our neighbors. We fast. We feast. These practices matter. But the scaffolding of our faith has to be love.
It cannot ultimately be a particular rule, a particular day, a particular food, a particular way of worshiping, or a particular way of understanding God.
The scaffolding is love because love looks like Jesus. And Jesus shows us what God looks like.
This is why Jesus continually called people to repent—not simply in the sense of feeling sorry for what they had done, but in the deeper sense of changing the way they thought. Jesus invited people to see differently. You have heard an eye for an eye. Jesus says, try another way. You have been taught to retaliate. Jesus says, try peace. You have been taught to determine who belongs.
Jesus keeps setting another place at the table.
The Christian life is not about becoming better at telling everyone else how to live. It is about allowing the Spirit of Christ to transform the person we are becoming. Perhaps that is one of the most liberating things about following Jesus: I can let God work on me without needing to manage everyone else.
The Kingdom of God Looks Like Goodness, Peace, and Joy
Romans gives us another beautiful picture of the kingdom of God. It is not ultimately about what we eat or drink. It is about goodness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
That is worth sitting with.
If our faith consistently produces contempt, perhaps we need to make room for the Spirit to change the way we think. If our spirituality makes us more judgmental, perhaps we have mistaken the scaffolding for the house. If our religious convictions make it harder for us to love our neighbor, perhaps we need to return to Jesus. The kingdom looks like goodness. It looks like peace.It looks like joy.
And it looks like people becoming more fully alive.
This is not another burden placed upon us. It is an invitation into freedom. We don't have to spend our lives policing the boundaries of belonging. We can spend our lives expanding them. We don't have to win every argument. We can choose peace.
We don't have to make everyone agree with us. We can practice love.
We don't have to control the spiritual lives of our neighbors. We can trust the Holy Spirit to be at work in them, just as the Spirit is at work in us.
The Communion Table: A Practice of Oneness
This is one reason the communion table matters so much to us at First Love Church.The table is where we practice oneness.
Every person is invited. We don't come because we have perfected ourselves. We come because Christ has invited us.
Even Judas ate at the table.
That matters.
Jesus knew Judas. Jesus knew what was coming. And still, Judas was at the meal. The table tells us something about the heart of God. Love does not dominate. Love includes. Love draws the circle wider. At communion, we do something mysterious and embodied. We eat bread. We drink. We receive. We participate in the life of Christ. And there is an ancient wisdom in the simple act of eating: what we eat, we become.
So perhaps the question for us is not only, What do I believe? Perhaps the deeper question is, What am I becoming? If Jesus were to live my day for me, would anyone notice? Would anyone notice in the way I drive? Would anyone notice in the way I speak? Would anyone notice in the way I respond when someone irritates me? Would anyone notice in the way I love my neighbor? Would anyone notice in the way I treat the person who disagrees with me? This is not a question meant to shame us. It is an invitation to wake up. To become attentive. To become more alive. To allow the Christ within us to become visible through the way we live.
A More Expansive Way to Follow Jesus
Following Jesus is not a project of becoming perfect. It is a practice of becoming free.
Free from contempt. Free from the exhausting need to be right. Free from the responsibility of judging everyone else. Free from the inner voice that tells us we are never enough. Free to see our neighbors as beloved. Free to bless what we do not understand. Free to live generously. Free to participate in the restoration of the world. Free to enjoy being human. Free to notice the beauty that has been surrounding us all along.
And this freedom is not freedom from relationship. It is freedom for relationship. It is freedom to participate in the oneness that Jesus prayed for. It is freedom to recognize that your neighbor belongs to God, and so do you.
Everyone belongs in the family of God.
That includes the people we understand and the people we don't. It includes the people who think like us and the people who don't. It includes our friends, our enemies, our neighbors, the stranger, the hurting, the joyful, the difficult, the beautiful, the broken.
All of us are being invited into the same great mystery: the love of God.
So perhaps we can stop condemning one another.
Perhaps we can stop condemning ourselves.
Perhaps we can loosen our grip on being right and open our hands to love. Perhaps we can breathe. Perhaps we can pay attention. Perhaps we can look again at the person in front of us and remember: This one bears the image of God. And then we can ask the question that matters most: How can I love well here? Because love is the way. Love is the practice. And love, beloved, is freedom.
Come Practice the Way of Love With Us
At First Love Church, we believe following Jesus is something we practice together. We gather around Scripture, prayer, communion, friendship, generosity, service, and the beautiful mystery of becoming a people who are learning to love well.
You do not have to arrive with all the answers. You do not have to have your faith perfectly figured out. You do not have to become someone else before you are welcome at the table.
Come as you are.
Come curious. Come hopeful. Come tired. Come full of questions. Come longing for a deeper way of following Jesus.
We gather for worship on Sundays at 10:00 a.m. in Ocala, and we welcome you to join us as we practice the way of Jesus together—a way of love, peace, belonging, generosity, and ever-expanding grace.
There is room for you here.
Come be part of a beloved community.