This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. John 15:12.
Today let us consider together how to recognise, and so flee, "the sin of being recruited." This is a sin that has robbed many of us of the love between us. It looks like this: someone comes to you and tells you the wrong another person has done — a wrong that was never done to you, and that you never saw the person do to anyone. But out of our weakness, or out of fear of damaging our relationship with the one bringing us the story, we decide to join them in hating the person named. And sometimes we find we hate them more than the one who brought the story does.
Sometimes it happens that we are told a story and come to hate someone we have never even met. Only in the heart there is someone called Frank, or Juma, or Lucy, or Rose, whose story we were given, and whom we hate with a bitterness beyond measure. The shock comes when the one who brought the story has made peace with the person named, and left you still hating them. This is the sin of being recruited.
Beloved, let us refuse this sin, even when the story comes from someone we trust completely. We refuse it not because the person is or is not being slandered, but because of Jesus' command to love. If we find that the wrong we have been told about the person is true, let us take the step of correcting them in a spirit of love.
Beloved of Jesus, come, let us love one another as Jesus loved us, who died for us while we were still sinners. Be blessed by the Lord Jesus.
By the Pastor