“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” ~ Charles Bukowski

Have you ever seen someone in line at the grocery store, bank, or post office, etc., and you know you’re supposed to know them, but you don’t remember their name, or where you know them from? Even worse, have you ever been out somewhere, and someone comes up to you, and calls you by name, and then says “Do you remember me?”. Note: Don’t ever ask me this, unless you’re ready for both of us to be embarrassed. I have to call my kids off in chronological order to remember their names at times, and I gave them birth, so you don’t stand a chance! Many times the reason we can’t place a name, and a reference to a face we are supposed to know is, because they are not where, or with whom we usually “associate” them. Isn’t it amazing how we never want to categorize, and label what is in our closets, but how often we categorize, and label people? We think “Oh that’s the waitress that always seems to forget something from my order, which is why I don’t leave her much of a tip”. Maybe that’s why we don’t remember her name (even though every time she serves us, she wears a name tag), or where we know her from when she’s standing right in front of us in the grocery store line with 2 crying children, a hand full of coupons, staring anxiously at the rising total on the cash register. We labeled her based on what we’ve seen her do, and we associate with her based on our negative encounters with her in the past. Have you ever noticed how once you place a label on something, or someone (Cheater, Dumb, Addict, Adulterer, Widow, Fat, Gossip, Divorced, Loser, etc.), it’s hard to get it off so that you can truly see what’s inside!

I’ve learned over the years there is always one more thing I need to know about someone before I make an assumption about them. We tend to label people based on what they do or have done, rather than WHO they are! I know AA is a wonderful program that has helped thousands of people recover from alcohol addiction. However, as I have witnessed in my own family, until the labeled identity of “I’m (Name), and I’m an Alcoholic” is changed in their own mind, they will never realize what full recovery, and deliverance looks and feels like. Yes, it’s imperative to keep in mind the depravity we are ALL so capable of if we aren’t choosing to die unto ourselves (our sinful nature, fleshly desires, etc.), and purposefully choose to be led by the Holy Spirit living in us as Christ followers. I don’t know about you, but I am so thankful that Jesus doesn’t label me by what I have done, or continue to do even when I try not to! Just look at what the Apostle Paul wrote about himself in Romans 7:¹⁵ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. Then he goes on to say later in the same chapter  ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! The enemy will always refer to what you have done to identify you, Christ always refers to what HE has done to identify you! Which label do you want to wear “Spotless, and Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb”, or what you did last?

We’ve all heard the term “Guilty by association.”, and it is true we become like the people we continually keep company with. Although it may be more enjoyable to hang out with those who believe, and act like we do, “They” are not who we are assigned to. When Jesus was questioned how he could hang out with people that had been labeled “sinners” in Luke chapter 5, Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” We live in a broken world filled with broken, and hurting people, and we say “God please help them.”, because we don’t want to get our hands dirty. Why do we keep praying for God to do something about something He has already commanded us to do? Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus said for us to make disciples of all the nations (not just people I feel comfortable with who are like me), Matthew 22:36-40 Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, and the second was to love your neighbor as yourself (even the people I don’t like). The only two labels we should assign to people are these: “Dearly Loved, and Saved by the blood of Jesus” OR “Dearly Loved, and Searching for the blood of Jesus”!

Jesus thank You for being the perfect example of Loving without Labels. Even when they were hurling insults at You while You were dying on a cross for them, You said “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Help me to see beyond what people do, and to love them simply because YOU Love them!