When I started reading a book called True Spirituality by Francis A. Schaeffer, I was convicted as I read the following:

God called us to love, and not only for those who are in our little portion of God’s church, or even for all our fellow Christians, but love for all people, unbelievers as well as believers. Schaeffer saw that there was, at this time, a tendency to minimize the challenge of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and to focus the love of Christians on those who are fighting alongside us in the Lord’s battles. He then went on to say: We face the same problem today, for the more secularized and “post -Christian” our society becomes, the greater temptation is to love only our fellow believers who are fighting by our side in the “culture wars.” We retreat from the command to love all people as we consider those outside the church as too worldly, as too dangerous to our spiritual well-being. Rather than love them, we feel constrained to keep ourselves seperate from them, to strive for purity of being uncontaminiated by having no contact with the “sinners” out there. But, as Schaeffer points out, this is not the kind of purity that God’s Word has in mind fo us. The Lord calls us to love all people, including those who are enemies of the gospel and those who blaspheme. This may not be comfortable, and it may not be easy, but this is the gospel of Christ, for He loved His enemies so much that He died to save us.

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