FAST FOOD (AD 2023): Thirtieth Helping

“My plan, my Father’s plan,” Jesus says, “is this: I am going to save the world by enduring evil with love. I am going up to Jerusalem, and there they are going to crucify me. I am going to endure it and love back. And anyone who wants to be associated with me as Messiah has to do the same thing. You have to ‘carry your cross’—that is, accept whatever happens to you, whatever falls on your shoulders as a result of the sin and ignorance and blindness of this world—and love back. And that’s how we are going to save the world…”

Jesus came, not to conquer, but to convert; not to destroy, but to give life in its fullness; not to win over his enemies but to win them over; not to stamp out evil with force, but to change the doers of evil into doers of good by enduring their evil with love. His goal was not to make the world safe for people, but to redeem the world by making people holy. He went to the heart of the problem by addressing, not the externals of human behavior, but the human heart, out of which all human behavior comes (see John 10:10; Matthew 15:18-20).

Ultimately, what brings about conversion is the presence and power of Christ’s own unconditional love in us by which we accept to lay down our lives for our enemies in order to prove that even our enemies are our friends and friends of Jesus.