Vulnerable Love

Among the many features of love, two stand out for their importance as well as their difficulty.  The first is sacrifice.  Love is sacrificial, meaning that love demands a certain level of self-denial for the betterment of the one being loved.  This is one of the clearest features of love, especially in regards to Christ, which He commends as the highest form of love (John 15:3).

Sacrificial love can be anything serving dinner, to doing the dishes, to getting out of bed at 3am to go pick someone up and drive them home, or it can even be as simple as spending time with someone over a cup of coffee.  Above all though, sacrificial love includes an element of vulnerability, one of other defining features of love.

Vulnerability, simply stated, is humility instead of pride.  Pride's rearing head of self-dignity and self-love serves to protect one's own image of themselves from potential threats and attacks.  This pride stands as a hindering wall of opposition to godly relationships.  When we maintain an air of pride, we do not allow our egos to be injured, particularly when the wounds may be self-inflicted.

Practically speaking, this means we will struggle, if not outright refuse, to ask for forgiveness because doing so would reveal gaps and chips in our prideful armor of self-exaltation.  Furthermore, we will be unable to accept our own errors and will only grow in rigid self-approval to the bereavement of sanctification's holy work.

Sanctification demands that we eschew pride in favor of vulnerability.  Repentance requires vulnerability.  When we have an attitude of vulnerability, we will be able to see ourselves truthfully, warts and all.  In this way, the Lord fills our eyes with the ability to see and the crevices of sin in our lives will be revealed so that we may repent and grow in sanctification.

To be sure, vulnerability can feel like weakness because in being vulnerable, we remove our armor of pride.  However, we are not left naked in our vulnerability; we are clothed by the Lord Himself, who holds us more than safe in His omnipotent arms of holiness.  When we open up ourselves to be vulnerable, the Lord is able to hold us tighter because the chain mail of pride is removed.

The essential component of vulnerability is faith, but faith girds two other requisites of vulnerability that go hand-in-hand: (1) courage and, (2) honesty.  Vulnerability requires courage because we are removing our well-fashioned, custom-made,  and battle-worn armor of pride.  This takes courage in faith, but it is paired with another measure of courage: honesty.  When we are vulnerable, we are honest despite our natural urging to protect ourselves.  This is courage and faith at its best and most powerful.

Ultimately, vulnerability is for our good.  When we are vulnerable we are able to forgive, able to ask for forgiveness, able to love, and able to receive God's sanctifying discipline.  It's like we open ourselves utterly to the Lord in faith that He will keep and protect our hearts.  Certainly, vulnerability demands a measure of wisdom and discernment in order to determine who we need to open up to, but on the whole, only when we are vulnerable is God able to do His holy work in us.  Let us then take on an attitude of vulnerability so that we may truly love as He has loved us!