Galatians 2:6 | Love or Favoritism?

It was a Sunday morning like many others. I had arrived at the church with my dad. He was setting up to play drums while I was getting my bass ready. Our worship pastor walks in and tells us that there is a lady sat outside our stage entrance door. My dad, myself, and our worship pastor all make way to meet this stranger. Her name was Charlotte. She would walk by our church and hear the music play every Sunday morning. Oh how she loved the music. We invited her in, though she turned it down. After some brief conversation, we made our way back inside.

Week by week, Charlotte became more of a permanent fixture of our Sunday mornings. She would sit there with a smile on her face as she heard the music play. Each of my siblings would also greet her and speak with her. She had been homeless for some years. She evidently had a complicated history of drugs and alcohol and she had her fair share of strange beliefs. Nevertheless, it was a joy to speak with her and shine the love of Christ.

Fast forward some years to when I am in college. I am talking with a person who claims to love Christ. We had many great conversations about the Lord and what our lives look like. Eventually, homelessness and poverty comes into the subject. With haste and zeal, the person I was talking with shared, "Oh I don't talk to homeless people. They are gross and they scare me." They proceeded to talk about how they don't understand poverty and how someone could even be poor. I was taken aback. This was so far from the character of Christ. I had no words.

Do we know that God does not show favoritism? In light of that truth, our lives must look like his. It is a rare trait to be able to make the statement that Paul just made. We highly esteem those who are highly esteemed. Should we meet a celebrity, everyone knows about it. When we talk with people who are in high places, we think we are making it. We see relationships with those in advantageous places adding something to us. Paul, however, did not see it as such. He saw the contrary. He came from the high places of scholarly Judaism and associated with the lowly.

Whether they be poor or whether they be rich, I long for us as believers to say the same as Paul. Whatever they are makes no difference to me. They are image bearers. They are in need of the light and love of Jesus. They add nothing to me for I have everything in Jesus. Should we live in such a way, we would associate with the lowly. We would not exalt the rich. We would not exalt wealth as we do in our culture. We would be left only to exalt the name of Jesus, no matter who we are around. Let us not show favoritism. Let us love with the same love that Jesus loved us.

How can you walk in love to your neighbor today?