Our brothers and sisters in Christ are a blessing. Often they are a blessing in disguise. Sometimes the disguise is really, really good.
Linus, in Peanuts, once gave one of the great summaries of fallen human nature: “I love mankind . . . it’s people I can’t stand!!” This is funny because it is not merely funny. Mankind is easy to love. Mankind is theoretical. Mankind does not borrow our tools and return them broken, interrupt our stories with a better story, mispronounce our name after six years, or send long emails without paragraph breaks.
The test of Christian love is not whether we love humanity. Humanity is a concept, and concepts rarely need rides to the airport. The test is whether we love the particular human being whom God has placed in front of us, apparently without consulting our preferences.
That person may be a blessing in disguise. And yes, the disguise may be excellent.
Christianity does not teach us that people are basically delightful if only we look hard enough. Christianity is not a philosophy of pretending. It is truth itself. And the truth is blunt enough to bruise: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
All have sinned. Not some. Not only the visibly irritating. Not only the fellow Christian who corners you after church to explain his theory of the Book of Revelation, the Federal Reserve, and seed oils. Not only the woman who has mistaken “sharing a prayer request” for gossip. Not only the man who says, “I’m just being honest,” shortly before committing a felony against charity.
All have sinned.
Including you, including me.
This is where Christian teaching becomes offensively useful. It refuses to let us divide the world into the normal and the irritating, the thoughtful and the exhausting, the spiritual adults and the stunted adolescents. We may make distinctions, and sometimes we must. Some people are immature. Some are selfish. Some are manipulative. Some are dangerous and require firm boundaries, discipline, or distance. Christian love is not gullibility.
But Christianity does not permit the deeper lie: that other people are the problem and we are merely their long-suffering audience.
The annoying Christian brother or sister is not an interruption of the Christian life. He is part of it. She is part of it. They are not a manufacturing defect in the Church’s product line. They are the material out of which God teaches us patience, humility, mercy, courage, and truth. This is distressing, because most of us would prefer to learn patience from a book or humility from a podcast.
God, however, seems to prefer people.
This has always been His method. He called Abraham, who lied. He called Moses, who made excuses. He called David, who needed lots of excuses. He called Peter, who had the gift of speaking before thinking. He called Paul, who began his public ministry by persecuting the Church.
The Bible is not a catalog of polished spiritual professionals. It is the record of God saving sinners and then making those sinners live together.
This is the miracle and the inconvenience of the Church.
The Church is a hospital for sinners. No one goes to a hospital and says, “This is a terrible hospital, it’s full of sick people.” No one should go to a church and say, “This is a terrible church, it’s full of sinners.” The presence of sinners in the Church is not a scandal against the gospel. It is the raw material of the gospel. The scandal is not that sinners are there. The scandal is when sinners pretend they are not sinners.
Christian love does not mean we declare everyone charming. Some people are not charming. Some people have worked very hard not to be charming and have succeeded beyond all expectations. Nor does Christian love mean that we excuse sin or enable manipulation. Love tells the truth. Love protects the vulnerable. Love confronts evil. Love sometimes says no. Love may require distance, consequences, and a locked door.
But love never permits contempt.
Contempt is the great luxury of the self-righteous. It allows us to look at another sinner and feel, for a moment, like we are not one. It is the phony sacrament of false innocence.
The gospel takes that away from us. It says that the difficult person before us is a sinner in need of grace. Then, before we can enjoy that observation too much, it says the same thing about us.
You are the difficult person in someone else’s Christian life.
This is a hard saying, but it is almost certainly true. Somewhere there is a person who hears your name and immediately prays for patience. Somewhere someone has had to forgive your interruption, your carelessness, your defensiveness, your endless story, your theological hobbyhorse, or your inability to reply to emails.
We are very aware of the grace other people require. We are less aware of the grace we consume.
That is why Christian fellowship is such an efficient instrument of sanctification. It gives us no safe place to hide inside noble abstractions. We cannot merely love “the poor,” “the Church,” “the brethren,” “the lost,” or “mankind.” Eventually we must love Harold, who talks too much; Brenda, who corrects everyone; Steven, who never helps clean up; Martha, who remembers every slight; Joe, who thinks he’s funny; and, worst of all, ourselves, who are always present when sin occurs.
This is not a call to theatrical niceness. Niceness wants everyone to feel pleasant. Love wants everyone to become holy. Niceness avoids conflict because conflict is awkward. Love enters conflict when truth requires it, and refuses conflict when pride desires it.
That distinction matters.
Some Christians need more gentleness. Some need more backbone. Some need to stop treating every disagreement like the Council of Nicaea. Others need to stop treating every doctrine like a napkin preference at a church picnic. Some need to speak the truth. Some need to discover that speaking the truth “in love” includes the last two words.
All of us need mercy.
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” This is the great equalizer. We do not stand before God as the competent helping the incompetent. We stand as the forgiven learning to forgive. We stand as the rescued learning not to despise the drowning. We stand as beggars who have found food and are still tempted to complain about the table manners of the other beggars.
Christ did not die for mankind in the abstract. He died for sinners in the concrete. He died for Peter by name. He died for Thomas, who doubted. He died for James and John, who wanted places of honor. He died for Paul, who had once breathed threats against the Church. He died for the thief beside Him. He died for the people who had failed, boasted, fled, betrayed, misunderstood, and sinned in ways both spectacular and ordinary.
And He died for each of us.
That is why our irritating brother or sister is not merely an obstacle to holiness. He may be one of God’s chosen instruments for producing it. This is a severe mercy. We would prefer God to make us loving by surrounding us with agreeable people who admire our best qualities and share our views on music, politics, coffee, and the correct level of enthusiasm.
Instead, God gives us the Church.
He gives us people we would not have chosen. He gives us the lonely, the awkward, the proud, the wounded, the intense, the evasive, the needy, the blunt, the fragile, the overconfident, the underconfident, and the people who begin sentences with “I don’t want to take too much time” and then take up too much time.
And then He says, “Love one another.”
Not admire one another. Not always enjoy one another. Not pretend one another’s faults are delightful personality quirks. Love one another.
Love is patient, which means people will give us opportunities to be patient. Love is kind, which means people will give us opportunities to be inconvenienced. Love is not arrogant, which means people will give us opportunities to be corrected. Love keeps no record of wrongs.
The commandment would be unnecessary if everyone were easy to love.
The Christian brother or sister who irritates us may be a blessing in disguise because he reveals our own disguise. He exposes the difference between our theology and our habits. He shows whether we truly believe grace is for sinners or merely for respectable sinners who sin in ways we find tasteful. He uncovers whether our patience is a virtue or only a mood dependent on sleep, food, or caffeine.
That exposure hurts. But it is a gift.
The person who annoys us may reveal our pride. The person who needs us may reveal our selfishness. The person who corrects us may reveal our vanity. The person who disappoints us may reveal our desire to control. The person who misunderstands us may reveal how much of our identity depends on being properly appreciated.
Blessings often arrive disguised as annoyances because annoyances tell the truth.
Of course, some disguises require discernment. Abuse is not fellowship. Manipulation is not a spiritual gift. The Christian duty to forgive does not abolish the Christian duty to protect. The shepherd does not prove his mercy by feeding the sheep to the wolf and calling it open-mindedness.
But most of our daily irritations are not wolves. They are sheep with bad habits. And we are one of them.
This is the place where the gospel becomes practical enough to be uncomfortable. It is easy to say that Christ loved us while we were yet sinners. It is harder to love someone who is currently sinning against our schedule, our preferences, our sense of order, or our desire to be thought clever. It is easy to confess that all have sinned. It is harder to remember it when we are the ones being sinned against, and harder still when we are the sinner.
Yet this is where Christ meets us. Not in imaginary community, but in the real one. Not among ideal Christians, but among actual Christians. Not in the love of mankind, but in the love of people.
The great commandment is not to love the idea of God, but to love God. The second is not to love the idea of neighbor, but our actual neighbor. The neighbor is particular. The neighbor has a face, a voice, a history, a need, and possibly a habit of forwarding emails with seven exclamation points!!!!!!! The neighbor is not always impressive. The neighbor is not always efficient. The neighbor is not always grateful.
Neither are we.
So the next time a Christian brother or sister appears before us in a truly magnificent disguise, we might pause before congratulating ourselves on our discernment. We might ask what God is teaching us. Patience? Honesty? Courage? Boundaries? Humility? Repentance? The terrifying possibility that we are not as easy to love as we imagined?
Our brothers and sisters are blessings. Not because they are always pleasant. Not because sin is charming. Not because the Church is a room full of naturally compatible people. They are blessings because Christ has joined us together in Himself, and because He uses sinners to sanctify sinners.
The disguise may be excellent.
So is ours.