Untitled Sermon (2)

Kierkegaard wisely said that there is nothing in the Holy Scriptures about loving man in the mass, only about loving our neighbor as ourself. Yet there is among us much evidence of love for mankind and little evidence of love for the individual. The idea of love for our brother is a beautiful thing as long as it does not demand that we put it into practice on some particular person; then it becomes a nuisance.

Many Christians love foreign missions who cannot bring themselves to love foreigners. They pray tenderly for the colored man in Africa but they cannot stand him in America. They love the Chinese in Hong Kong and are willing to give generously to send someone to convert him, but they never try to convert him when he is in a laundry on Main Street. They wear a flower to honor mother on her day, but she is too much of an inconvenience to be welcome in the home, so she is shunted from place to place till she is so sick and weary that she can be sent at last to a nursing home to await the end.

Matthew 5:43–44; Matthew 22:37–39; Romans 12:9–13; 1 Timothy 1:5–6

The Warfare of the Spirit, 75.

A. W. Tozer

Christian as unusual person