Now it is the spirit of love that it will put itself to trouble for the weak, for the infirm, the foolish, and even for the unthankful and evil. It is the easy downward course to criticize, judge, condemn, discard, cast off. That is the way of the flesh. “Am * my brother’s keeper?” asked Cain. If not that, he was at any rate his brother’s brother. But the flesh will not surrender its ease, to take up the tedious responsibility of nurturing a lost soul into life and righteousness. It is more convenient to turn one’s back upon the sinful and miserable, and to seek pleasanter associations—why worry about those? And that especially when they do not want to be helped. Who will stand up to “endure such contradiction of sinners against himself?” (Heb. 12:3). Only love will do it. Love “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” But for that very cause love must suffer; and those who love most suffer most. And what love suffers in the name and spirit of Jesus, is in the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ; as it is written: “The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me.” (Rom. 15:1-3). “Bear ye one another’s burden and so fulfil the law of Christ.” Gal. 6:2.

-R H Boll, “Words In Season,” April 1917