When People Are Hard to Love
Do you have difficult-to-love people in your life? I call them my DTLP, and I struggle. Just ask my praying friends.
Recently, this quote resonated with me:
“A few years ago, we (the Benhams) were on a panel with Dr. Tony Evans and a question about love came up. Dr. Evans responded, ‘Love is compassion with standards’” (I Will Stand Strong 30 Day Challenge, YouVersion).
Another way we might say the same thing is, "Love is compassion with boundaries," a word that gets a lot of air time in conversations about self-care and self-preservation in difficult relationships. I wonder, in light of Christ and His standard of love, what does the Bible say about boundaries and DTLP? What is He doing in us when He has us in hard relationships? As Priscilla Shirer (Tony's daughter) says in her Bible study Elijah, “The constant give and take of family life, even a surrogate family, is precisely the dynamic that God often uses to mold us in a unique way…The fruit of God’s Spirit—virtues, like patience, gentleness, and kindness—are not cultivated in contexts where they are not required.”
Relationships with DTLP require and cultivate these virtues.
Recently, as I talked with God about this—AGAIN—I had a few questions:
Is it possible to love someone we don’t like, especially when the relationship is necessary, but not necessarily desired?
What do we do when God holds us to His standard, but someone else's difficult mindsets or behavior precipitates the need for limits or standards in the relationship?
Before we go any further, let me offer a critical clarification: my DTLP are not abusive. They do not present a danger to me or my family. If you have DTLP in your life who threaten you or your family physically, emotionally, mentally, or sexually, remove yourself from danger. Please reach out to someone who can counsel you. Please ask for help.
But if, like me, your DTLP are just that—difficult—God's word answers our first question with a resounding and non-negotiable "Yes."
As I studied what He has to say about this subject, He illuminated His manner of love for us as He opened my eyes (and I hope my heart) a bit wider to the love He wants us to have for others.
Jesus says in John 14:15 (ESV), “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” His standard is to love Him with proof, which is to do what He says. If we love Him, our lives prove it. In Matthew 22:34-40, He boils His commandments down to two that cover all: love God, and love one another. We can know we love others when we love God and do what He says (see 1 John 5:2). Even when it’s hard, because people can be hard.
But you know what John goes on to say next? “His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). From Jesus’ perspective, loving DTLP is not burdensome, even when it feels like a heavy duty. Our model is God, who “is gracious and full of compassion” (Psalm 111:4 NKJV). In the Hebrew, this means He has pity on us and is merciful.
Merciful.
That word knocked the wind out of my stiff-necked resistance to surrender this. Again. At a deeper level. It is something I am not toward my DTLP. In light of James 2:13, I want to be. He says, “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
This is where God drilled down to a root in my struggle to love DTLP: when I'm full of judgment, I'm empty of mercy. Ouch.
Matthew 9:36 tells us that Jesus—the only truly righteous one who has authority to judge—“when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.” In the Greek this means His bowels literally yearned for them with inward affection and tender mercy, pity, and sympathy. Even before Jesus became our High Priest forever, “every high priest taken from among men was appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. He could have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself was also subject to weakness” (Hebrews 5:1-2).
Used only here, the Greek word for compassion means gentle, as in “treat indulgently” (Strong’s G3356). You know what I tend to do in my prideful judgment of another’s weakness, even if only known in my heart and thoughts? I view them harshly. I get stingy and withhold. Peter says this: “Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous” (1 Peter 3:8 NKJV). The phrase “having compassion one of another” is a different Greek word, which by implication means to be “mutually commiserative” (Strong’s G4835).
To commiserate means to be in it together. It is in-it-with-ness among ALL of us as sinners who owe penalty for our sin and are entirely dependent on the grace and love of God…No. Matter. What. It is to have empathy and pity, not because we feel sorry for someone in something we know nothing about, but because we know exactly what it means to be a desperately hopeless sinner without Christ.
Judgment rejects someone based on a sense of superiority or entitlement. Compassion says, “I’m just like you—just as much a sinner deserving of death but saved by grace. We’re in this together, not against each other.” Compassion thinks, "I can be just as difficult to love. I can be that person someone else feels the need to love with standards." Compassion is rooted in humility.
Could we not all pray what David does in Psalm 19:12-24?
Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins (this means pride and arrogance); let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer (parentheses mine).
Because of His love for us and by His power at work in us, we can love those we don't like, even when we don't want to. While I want boundaries to control relationships and limit a person's access to me and my life, maybe that's not God's first priority for me, which begs another question: are boundaries even the first priority, or would God have us develop humility and compassion first? Would He have us learn to love His way?
Proverbs 10:12 says, “love covers a multitude of sins." As God’s children, His love forgives sin. His love keeps no record of past, present, or future transgressions. His love conceals sin rather than expose it. His love overwhelms it in the blood of Jesus rather than exact our due penalty for it. The unconditional, immeasurable, infinite love God bestows on us is the debt we owe others, even our DTLP.
Paul says in Romans 13:8 (NKJV), “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.” I don’t have to like someone to love them. They don’t have to be easy to love or somehow earn it, because my debt isn’t to them. It is to God. I have received this manner of love from Him, and now I owe a debt to show His same love to others, like it or not.
Jesus said it like this:
But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful (Luke 6:32-36 NKJV).
Talk about a counter-cultural absolute.
Listen, I can be this unthankful, evil person—hurtful, of ill character, degenerate, fatalistic, morally in the wrong, down and out, vicious, a trouble maker, malicious, grievous, and lewd—yet God is kind to me. By His grace, those who love me are kind to me, even when I don't deserve it. So when our DTLP are ungrateful and evil, God says we own them love. We are to exercise pity and compassion, because we are just as sinful, just as undeserving, and just as in need of Jesus' love, forgiveness, and mercy. Their sin is not worse. It does not trump ours and excuse us from the debt of love we owe them.
Seems as though God’s first priority for our relationships, then, isn't to figure out boundaries but ways to learn to love like He loves us. Makes me wonder if God would answer my questions with a question of His own:
"Have you loved this person the way I love you?"
As I reconsider my relationships with DTLP in light of GOD’s love and my debt of love to Him, I become increasingly convinced He uses these relationships to work something out of or into me. Does He want me to walk more humbly in His ways? Be surrendered more entirely to His commandments? Be more fully available as a vessel of His grace, mercy, and kindness to me? Think more in line with His truth? I would say "Yes."
As God works in our hearts and in our DTLP, it is His kindness and generosity that change us, not harshness and withholding. So as He works, we can show others the same kindness we enjoy and want from Him. Paul might ask us: "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4).
Repentance is the reversal of a decision. We reconsider our heart-set, mindset, and actions and think differently as a result. Our change of thinking produces a change in behavior. We make different choices about how we treat and interact with people. We see a change in how we live and love others. There needs to be a change in how I think and therefore see my DTLP. That change of thinking needs to produce a reversal of my behavior toward them.
I pray His word in Ephesians 3:16-20 be true for me and for you:
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height--to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen (emphasis mine).
Having laid this groundwork, we'll tackle our second question next time:
What do we do when God holds us to His standard, but someone else's difficult mindsets or behavior precipitates the need for limits or standards in the relationship?