What does it mean to love with God’s holiness? We put it this simply. It means to hate what God hates and it means loving what God loves! God’s character is perfect. Another word that might be used is glorious, beautiful. All that He is, He reflects the splendor of his own character. And so to love with the holiness of God is to love with a hatred of sin and love of beauty. Now that’s not an easy concept I am quite aware. To hate what is evil and to love that which is good.

Say you are walking in the woods. And it’s a beautiful woods, and it’s a beautiful spring day. You’re walking near a bubbling little spring. And as you’re walking, you’re just caught up in the beauty of the environment that you’re in. But as you walk along the stream, all of a sudden, you see this pile of trash, a couple of beer bottles thrown around and bunch of papers, that somebody had a picnic and left.

What’s your response when you see that in that context? My suspicion is that many of us would see that with a kind of disgust like, "Who would have left that?" kind of a mood of "slobs, pigs." We hate sin. The question is, "Do we also love beauty? One of the ways to get to that and it’s a small point, but as you walk by it, do you feel just disgust or is there any energy whatsoever in you to actually go over and pick the bottles up, pick the papers up and then find some place to deposit it that doesn’t mar the beauty.

The problem for me is I hate sin but I’m not sure I have that great a love for beauty. As I see trash, I am going to remark internally or externally about those who left it. But I don’t know if I have the energy to actually go over and pick it up. I don’t like your sin, I don’t like when you hurt me, but do I actually conceive of what you might become? Do I allow my mind to envision, pray for, and actually plan for the kind of person that you could become? To be like God means to have a holiness that hates and loves simultaneously.

I had the privilege as I was writing the Bold Love book, to interact with my father as he was dying of cancer. And it was a very, very difficult time. My father was a man of his generation. A kind man in many ways, but aloof emotionally. As he was going through a cancer treatment. I would call him regularly on the phone and ask him how he was doing. He would give me a quick, "Well, I’m doing fine." And I would ask more questions and he would cut me off. And something just inside said, "Ah! There’s no use to ask because he really won’t tell me."

Well, what does it mean to love with God’s holiness? It means to not be thwarted by another person’s sin. to have something of the mindset and the mood and heart of – and it will sound strange at first but bear with me. It means you have something of the mood and mind of, "I’m going to get you! I’m after you because I can see what is in you that is really despicable. The fact that you won’t let me be part of your heart and your journey and your agony is not just, "Well, that’s men of that generation, that’s a part of his heart that refused to deal with reality, that refused to, in one sense, let others be part of the reality of his heart". Well, what does it mean then to thwart him? To have the strength of God means to hate and to love. Hate that which blocks and work towards that which enhances.

I thwarted him when he would tell me over the phone, "You’ve got to quit calling, you’re spending too much money." My response to him was, "You’re going to die and I’m going to live with a lot of regrets. But let me tell you one regret I’m not going to live with – and that is not having talked to you because I saved a few dollars."

That’s what I mean by living with the holiness of God and that is, "I’m going to be in your face. I’m going to be in your way. I’m going to somehow stand so that you have to move very far around me in order to live out the absence of character that God intended. Now I’m going to move into your life, but not just with holiness in the sense of strength, but also with another major category and that’s mercy.

What does it mean to enter into someone’s life with that part of God’s character? To put it again very simply, and that is, "As I stand in your way, there will be tears in my eyes." It means, there’s something inside of me that grieves for the person that you are, as well as hungers for the person that you one day could be. And so that means, I grieve, I hurt, as well as I rejoice. That means a very passionate heart that longs to see good things happen for you and feels the pain and the sorrow as well, anticipates and looks forward to the joy that lies ahead. So that means, a mood of being able to enter in with tenderness.

What you’re about to see are again dramatic interactions. Interactions that we’ll come back to evaluate from the standpoint of: "Does it reflect strength? Did it have a picture of God’s holiness? On the other side, "Did it have a picture of God’s mercy and tenderness?"

Terry, Buck’s wife is going to interact with Buck about certain realities that Buck, like most of us, would prefer to avoid.

What you just observed is a good picture of bold love. A warning needs to be said right off, though. It’s not the only picture of bold love. There are many times where Terry may have handled that interaction simply, literally by asking if he wanted a cup of coffee and offering it to him.

But we do want to stress one very important point – bold love will at some point and at some level engage the other heart in the context of reality be it through kindness, but it strength, there will be combinations of the two.

It’s very important to also hear, I don’t think Terry handled it brilliantly from the standpoint of everything she said was perfectly well said. That’s one of the points about a war – sometimes you say things you wish you did not say. Yet on the other hand, I would say that Terry is a very good picture of a modern day Nathan. Nathan, being the prophet who confronted King David about his adultery and about his murder. She faced certain realities for Buck in such a way that she invited him, lured him, she set him up. And then as the data began to get clearer, she held his feet to the fire. But she did so with certain things I want to underscore.

But again, hear another major warning: there’s no way to quantify what it means to boldly love in terms of "do this" and "then this" and "then that." It’s a matter of "do you have the heart to engage in dealing with reality in another person’s life because you’ve dealt with the log in your own eye?"

Do you understand the utter importance of having a broken and contrite heart? If you do not deal with hatred of sin in your own eye, then you’re going to be messing with other people’s eyes without regard for real hatred of sin which will always be first seen in your own life and in your own heart. Again, presume that it’s there to some degree in Terry, what then is she to do?

First of all, she dealt with the confrontation from the standpoint of comparison or analogy. Now bear with me.

Isn’t it always easier to help someone see something about themselves if they see it in another person first? You know, the principle is probably very true and that is you can see sin in someone else far easier than you can in your own life.

Sometime ago, I was with my boss and we were flying, got to the airport and he got his luggage and I didn’t get mine. And not being one of the more calm individuals in that context, I had a few choice words to speak to the airline individuals. Afterwards, I thought I’d been delicate but somewhat strong. Afterwards he said to me, "You know, you handled that situation the same way, and then he gave the name of a man we know only too well. A very bombastic, angry, intense, self-righteous individual I don’t have a lot of regard for. As soon as he said, "You know you handled that situation just like.." I looked at him and said, "I did not!"

He looked at me with a very wry smile and said, "How would "so and so" have handled the situation if he had been compared to you? I looked at him and said, "Well, he would have said ‘I did not!’" He said, "Well, what would you say?"

Again, cut to the quick! He said it very clearly! It was easier to see sin in another and then when that sin was seen, now being able to see, make the parallel to myself was –no less painful, but conceptually a whole lot easier.

That’s what Terry does in terms of setting a scenario where she creates this artificial situation in terms of a basic comparison, of this little boy by the name of Chuckie who was in a coma.

She backed up the comparison with data. The major point was the "coma". Chuckie was in a coma physically; you’re in a spiritual emotional coma, where you don’t want to face what happens inside of you and outside of you when you’re with your parents. She backed it up with data and that’s when the intensity of his own response came, "It’s getting better, isn’t it? Her response was, "No, it’s not!"

Bold love requires intensity. You’re not going to deal with the entrenched cancer inside that is more like a barnacle that clings to the bottom of the boat in such a way that if you were to come to the barnacle and tried to knock it off with your finger, you’d be in severe pain. You must have the opinion and the thought that what you’re dealing with is something we don’t quickly desire to give up and therefore, it requires war, battle, and engagement.

And she has a heart that is willing to involve herself with certain intensity with the conflict. And you can see it ebb and flow. She has a sense of humor that I so enjoy in terms of being able to de-intensify, and then she intensifies, she’s direct. She has the ability to enter into that kind of conflict.

She made a mistake. She used the term "sick games." And Buck defensively but accurately picked up on that as a real failure on Terry’s part. Notice how she handled it. She didn’t wallow in her failure nor accuse him of bringing that up at a point that brought her off the topic. She simply admitted humbly that she failed and got back to the nature of the conflict itself. She did so well not just with humility but with a real hunger, a real hunger for him. "I love you. I’m for you. I understand you cannot see what you do not see, but I want to help".

And so she mixes up the interaction with humor, intensity, anger, backs away, admits her fault.

There you have a grand picture of bold love! What it means to offer strength, the kind of strength that stands in your way and says, "I will not let you out of this." Yet on the other hand, a sense of great mercy and tenderness in terms of "I really long for the best for you. And I am willing to be used by God and you for the sake of seeing righteousness develop in your heart.

I think it’s fair to ask yourself 4 questions: