Leading up to this Father’s Day, I’ve been thinking a lot about what does a loving father look like. This past week someone asked me, what does it mean to die to yourself? It was through an email, so I had time to think about my answer. I wanted to spit out the cookie cutter answer that it means to be unselfish, but since I had time, I decided to meditate on that question.
As I was meditating on this thought in the context of Father’s Day, God hit me with an answer that wasn’t comfortable. Love in inconvenient. That isn’t a trait of love that you will find listed in 1 Corinthians 13. Yet it’s very consistent with scripture. Philippians 2:5-8 says, ““Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
There is nothing convenient about what Jesus did. As if it wasn’t enough that He gave up the form of God to become man, He then died on the cross. This was after He walked the Earth for thirty-something years subjecting Himself to all that we go through. He didn’t have to inconvenience Himself, but He did because He loves us.
The inconvenient truth that I’ve been learning is that the moments I least want to are the moments I most need to. John 13:34 says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” That love is so much more than being selfless. It’s a complete lack of regard for self.
That is not an easy task. We’ve all received the phone call from a person at a time that we didn’t feel like dealing with whatever we knew they were going to unload on us. We’ve all had the friend ask a huge favor at the absolute worst time. We’ve all had the person who wronged us so bad that burned the bridge beyond repair.
Jesus considered equality with God as worthless to love us. Not because we deserved it. We were still sinners when all this happened. There was nothing we did to earn it. He decided to inconveniently love us anyway. This Father’s Day, I’m thankful He did.
until next time…