Stretchy Love

Think about your relationships like a rubber band. When you first enter into a relationship with someone, love does not have to stretch much to fit. You enjoy this person. You are aligned. Everything is comfortable. But then you find out what they believe and it stretches. They say the wrong thing and it stretches further. Most of our closest relationships look like a rubber band pulled in six directions at once. The apostle Peter has something to say about that.

The Most Important Thing

In 1 Peter 4:8, the apostle Peter identifies the most important quality of Christian community: “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” And in order to wrap our love around sinful people, we need to stretch a lot.

The definition of love used here is self-giving for the good and joy of another. That is not a sentimental definition. It is a theological one. First John 4:8 says that God is love. Not that God is loving, though He certainly is. If you want to identify the one quality of God that is most central to all that He is, it is love. And because God is conforming us into the likeness of His Son (Romans 8), and because no one embodied love more than Jesus, love is not a Christian add-on. It is what Christianity is.

Everyone Is Normal Until You Get to Know Them

Notice that Peter does not simply say “love one another.” He says keep loving one another. That word “keep” is doing a lot of work. The only reason Peter must command us to “keep loving” is that naturally we do not want to work at love. We may start with love, but then people disappoint us. What happens then? Well, perhaps you start looking for a different small group, or a different church, hoping that somewhere out there you’ll find a community of believers without annoying people in it. What you’ll find, of course, is that people at the church across town are often more annoying than the ones you left behind.

At Full Stretch

Back to the rubber band. The Greek word Peter uses for “covers”, as in “love covers a multitude of sins”, carries the idea of being at full stretch. Gospel love stretches because the person who understands the gospel understands that God loving them was the ultimate stretch. If God could do that for me, then I can stretch to love my brothers and sisters in Christ. The person who has lost sight of the gospel has lost their elasticity. Their love snaps instead of stretches.

When the Rubber Band Snaps

Dietrich Bonhoeffer died by hanging on April 9, 1945, three weeks before Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. He was thirty-nine years old, leading an underground seminary during Nazi rule in Germany. He wrote his treatise on Christian community called, Life Together, while the world was collapsing around him. So, when Bonhoeffer warns us about what destroys Christian community, it is worth paying attention. His words are direct: “Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial.”

Bonhoeffer understood that it is precisely in the moment of great disillusionment, when a fellow Christian has failed us and our rubber band is stretched to its limit, that the gospel becomes most real. That is the moment when we cannot love by our own strength or idealism. We can only love by grace. That is the moment, as Bonhoeffer says, when the bright day of genuine Christian community begins to dawn.

The Relationship Stretching You Right Now

This teaching does not stay safely in the abstract. It lands in relationships right here and now. It speaks to your marriage, where you are being called to stretch toward your spouse, your family, or your friends even when it isn’t easy.  The gospel that saves us is a gospel that changes us.

One of the clearest signs that the gospel has taken root is that we are willing to stretch, to keep on loving imperfect people, not because they have earned it, but because we know we have not earned it either. So, think about the relationship in your life that is pulling that rubber band tight right now. Ask God for the strength to keep loving, as you practice stretchy love.