The Memory of Love

Something in our time is shifting the way people handle relationships. The severing of ties—once seen as a painful last resort—now happens with astonishing ease. Explanations are rare. Distance is framed as self-care. Silence is called wisdom.

The words used to justify separation are getting sharper. “Toxic.” “Narcissist.” “Prideful.” Language once meant to name wounds now often declares verdicts. Entire histories are reduced to a single label. Terms like “unsafe” begin to take the place of conversation, and before long, love itself is replaced with the safety of distance.

Even then, the logic often sounds spiritual. It’s easy to feel noble for stepping away. But what if the things we criticize most harshly in others are the very things hiding in us?

C. S. Lewis understood this. In Mere Christianity, he wrote, “There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. The more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.” That’s the trouble with pride—and projection. The more deeply it lives within, the more convinced we become that it belongs to someone else.

He also wrestled with forgiveness and how hard it is to separate sin from the sinner. Looking inward, he reflected, “However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself… Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.” (Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapters 7–8)

The problem isn’t that harm gets named. The problem is when naming becomes condemning, when we walk away instead of walking with, and when we build distance rather than reconciliation. Jesus never lived that way.

In many cases, it doesn’t even look angry. It presents as calm, composed, even spiritually grounded. But nothing in the Gospels suggests that quiet rejection is a fruit of the Spirit.

Jesus entered the world through a family line marked not only by failure but by scandal and sorrow. Abraham handed his wife over to save himself. Jacob lied to his father and stole his brother’s blessing. David took another man’s wife and then arranged that man’s death. But the story doesn’t stop with the patriarchs.

In the genealogy recorded in Matthew, there’s Tamar, who was left vulnerable by her own family and forced to secure justice in a way that still shocks us. Rahab was a prostitute from Jericho, an outsider with a past, yet she was welcomed by faith into the people of God—and into the very line that would bring the Savior. Ruth came from Moab, a nation born from incest, and yet her faithfulness to Naomi became the path through which God’s kindness would reach the world. Bathsheba, though unnamed in the genealogy, is remembered as the woman taken by David in his moment of power and sin, yet she bore Solomon and became part of the line that led to Christ.

None of these names were accidents. God wasn’t embarrassed by them. He wrote redemption through them. The family He chose wasn’t clean, but it was willing. And that’s the pattern He has always worked with—people who are broken but not discarded, stories that are stained but not erased.

Jesus didn’t distance Himself from this history. He entered it with full awareness. The story of redemption doesn’t avoid shame or dysfunction. It embraces them, not to glorify the sin but to glorify the mercy that transforms it.When He arrived, those closest to Him failed to recognize Him. The ones meant to prepare the way did not welcome Him in the end.

“He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.”

—John 1:11

Still, He remained among them.

Rather than retreating, He continued offering healing, calling disciples, feeding strangers. At the hour of His death, He looked down and entrusted His mother to John’s care, drawing even deeper bonds between those who stayed. He built family even in the final breaths.

“Woman, behold your son… Behold your mother.”

—John 19:26–27

This was not sentimentality. Love like this costs something. It enters the mess and refuses to withdraw.

When describing the final judgment, Jesus did not speak in abstractions or theological categories. He talked about hunger and sickness. He described people in prison, people on the margins, people in need of presence. The ones commended were those who responded with mercy. The ones condemned weren’t cruel; they were absent.

“As you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me…

As you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

—Matthew 25:40, 45

What separated the two groups wasn’t belief or identity. It was memory. One lived with awareness of Christ in others. The other moved on, unaware that anything sacred had been missed.

The apostle Paul warned that a time would come when outward spirituality would remain while inward connection disappeared. He described a version of faith that looks convincing but lacks love. Not just hypocrisy—but something more subtle: a way of life that speaks spiritual words yet denies the living presence of God by refusing mercy.

“People will be lovers of self… ungrateful, without love, unforgiving… having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

—2 Timothy 3:2–5

This is not a distant warning. It sounds like today.

In another passage, Jesus tells of those who will stand before Him, full of confidence in their spiritual achievements. They call Him Lord and recall all they’ve done in His name. But He says something that stops everything:

“I never knew you; depart from Me.”

—Matthew 7:23

These people were not strangers to religion or devotion. What they lacked was relationship that looked like His—love that endures disappointment, that chooses to stay near, that doesn’t erase others in the name of self-preservation.

John, the beloved disciple, said it plainly:

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.”

—1 John 4:20

James echoed the same truth. Praise offered to God loses its meaning if the image of God is cursed in others. Jesus told the story of a man who had been forgiven a massive debt and then immediately choked someone over a smaller one. When that man was called to account, the issue wasn’t misunderstanding—it was forgetting.

“Should you not have had mercy…?”

—Matthew 18:33

Not all distance is wrong. Some forms of protection are necessary. There are situations where stepping away is part of survival. But what’s become common is not wisdom—it’s division dressed as virtue. Many have been trained to feel holy for walking away.

That is not the way Christ lived.

He was betrayed, abandoned, denied. Even so, He chose restoration. He gave Judas a seat at the table. He called Peter back from failure. He entrusted the Gospel to a flawed and wounded group of people and told them to carry it to the ends of the earth.

This is not a story of exclusion. It’s a story of love that keeps making room.

Nothing was spared, not even His own life, in order to reconcile estranged people. Israel was not replaced. Gentiles were not rejected. The family line was redeemed so the entire world could be adopted.

At the end, what matters won’t be how well boundaries were defended or how persuasively another person’s faults were explained. That language won’t survive the light of eternity.

What will remain is love—or the absence of it.

Those who were ignored here were never invisible to God. Each forgotten act of mercy, each withheld kindness, will be remembered. But so will every step toward reconciliation. Every moment of presence when it would’ve been easier to retreat. Nothing like that is ever lost.

That’s what lasts.