This is one of the greatest marks of maturity and belief in the gospel:
When you let people be sinners.
Think of how often we decry people when they don’t measure up to our standard. Think of how often we are surprised when people don’t act like saints towards us, but sinners; how indignant we become when someone slights us or ignores us or generally acts in a bad way.
Why do we expect such goodness to flow to us from others, and are left disallusioned we they are not?
Is it not that we assume that people should treat us as our righteousness demands? People should know our good intentions and respond accordingly!
It is no secret. We don’t judge ourselves based on what we have done, but on our potential. Or we ignore our actions and judge ourselves on our intentions.
But other people don’t judge this way. They judge us on our actions, or better put, how they perceive our actions. And, of course, that is how we judge others.
And that explains a great deal of the mess we are in — and something has to give. And that something is desire to be seen the way you want to be seen, respected like you want to be respected. This is not an appeal to be a doormat, but to give up self.
People aren’t going to regard us the way we want to be regarded, and to demand that from others is to take the place of deity; we want our will to be done. But we can’t love people like that — particularly the people who hurt us.
And consider Jesus for a moment, the man who had every right to demand that he be regarded for who he really was, layed that right down, so he could serve us, even letting that kill him.
