When people demand our love.

Recently, I explored the Apostle John’s teaching in 1 John 4:7–21 and argued that God’s precious and costly love is meant not simply to fill us, but to flow through us to those around us—even those who are difficult to love.

After the sermon, someone told me that their father would have enjoyed it. He would not have heard the sermon primarily as a call to consider how God might be changing him, but as an argument for how his children ought to treat him better.

That comment reminded me of something from my own family. I recall my brother throwing Galatians 6:2 at me as a justification for his expectation that I should support him. I don’t remember all the circumstances, but he was certainly able-bodied and capable of looking after his own needs. Had he read a little further in the passage, he would also have noted that Paul placed that admonition within a broader context of personal responsibility.

How do we respond when people weaponize the Gospel’s invitation to personal transformation for their own benefit?

First of all, we shouldn’t be surprised that Scripture is misused. Because the Bible is recognized as an authority in our community, there will be people who attempt to use that authority to serve their own ends. Scripture itself gives us plenty of examples of this.

But secondly—and this is what is key—the biblical call to love our neighbour, and everything that call entails, is meant to be exercised freely. The fact that Jesus commands me to love my neighbour does not mean that my neighbour is entitled to demand my love on their terms.

Consider Jesus. While he displayed costly and sacrificial love, he didn’t simply offer people what they thought they needed. The disciples craved positions of power, and the crowds longed for a political saviour. But Jesus offered them something different: the kind of love the Father had sent him to give.

Christian love doesn’t abdicate responsibility for determining how to love another person to the person receiving that love. Love requires us to discern what is genuinely good for another person, rather than simply giving them whatever they ask for. Sometimes love means giving generously; sometimes it means carrying someone’s burden; sometimes it means speaking a difficult truth; and sometimes it may even mean saying no.

Loving someone does not mean surrendering our responsibility to exercise wisdom and discernment.

Nor does Christian love become an entitlement for those who want it. We are called to love others freely, not because they have successfully claimed our love as something they deserve, but because God has first loved us.

The Gospel does not teach us to say, “Because God commands you to love me, you owe me something.” It teaches us to say, “Because God has loved me, I am free to love you.”

That is the movement of the Gospel: from being loved to loving. God’s love fills us, transforms us, and then flows through us—not as a demand we place upon others, but as a gift we freely give. And because it is God’s love flowing through us, we remain responsible for how we give it: with wisdom, truth, courage, generosity, and grace.