The above focus for today is a powerful scripture. We have one obligation to humanity and that is to love people as we love ourselves. To do unto others as we want them to do to us. Fulfillment of this scripture would eliminate all laws, all violence, all murders, all resentments, all envy, all quarreling, all bullying, all self-interest, etc. This scripture is retelling the story of how God loved the first people he made in his image. He did not make them for conflict, for punishing others, to mistreat others. He made them to walk in the Garden with him in absolute harmony, in peace, in a place of rest. Today, as you look around in your society, you find little harmony, peace, and rest. Instead, everywhere we find an abundance of roiling dark clouds of conflict, disagreement, and even violence. In every country, we find those who would seek to take advantage of others, to exploit others for their own purposes. If some areas seem quiet at this time, just wait, for wars and rumors of wars have been a part of every country. This is the basic nature of human beings. The Bible says humans are disruptive from their childhood. Amazingly, we often cannot get along well with our most intimate friends and family. Christian families break apart at the same rate as secular families who claim no God in their existence. The nature of man even in Christian families resides in all of us. We cannot escape our fallen state on our own. The last card in the game of life is often the self-interest card. The prophet Ezekiel writes about this when talking about God’s judgment on the state of Israel: Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again. Therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents. (Ezekiel 5:9-19) An awful thought, but survival is important to us. We will do what it takes to survive or we will do what we feel is necessary to smooth out our lives. Consequently, arguments, conflicts, wars, murders and every part of mayhem is in the history of mankind. We are a very dangerous specie: we even assign others to do our hurting and killing. Lawyers are abundant in almost every society. They explicate our entanglements, they defend us when we are in trouble, they support us when we feel a need for legal help. With the best of intentions, our governmental institutions are there to help us live together in some kind of peace and harmony. We have police at every level of government to help us avoid doing only what is best in our own eyes. They remind us that we must live together in an organized way. And we usually obey them unless we feel we can get away with breaking the law, such as in the United States where almost all the people speed on the highways. This is but an indication of human nature, a nature that came into the being in the Garden of Eden.
As Jesus approaches Jerusalem he weeps. The crowd that sees him joyfully rejoices over him. They praise him for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” (Luke 19:38) Yet the Bible tells us: As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (Luke 19:41-44) Jesus knew war would come to them, that they had rejected the one who brings peace, eradicates conflicts, and destroys ill-will. Jerusalem and Israel rejected Jesus even though He had done so many supernatural things in their midst. They really did not want a ruler who would curb their vices. They wanted one to deliver them from Rome, but not one who would penetrate their hearts, who would make them clean from the inside out. This they rejected. Their nature of doing their own will was stronger than doing God’s will on Earth; consequently, they hung him on a cross, to do away with the king of peace, security, and harmony. The meaning of life for the people was striving to implant their wills on others. They strove to find what they desired in life, not to do the will of God: to love others as they loved themselves, to treat others as they wanted to be treated. Love is all that God commands of us—to love God and others. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. In Hosea 7 we see that God wants to heal his people, but their sins are too great. I long to redeem them but they speak about me falsely. They do not cry out to me from their hearts but wail on their beds. (Hosea 7:13-14) Hosea describes a wayward people, a people who have rejected his commandments, his hand in their lives. They have chosen other ways, chosen to worship self and other gods. They were as a people with thieves on the inside and bandits on the outside. Otherwise, their society was depraved, wicked in every situation. God saw it all and He sent a Savior to Israel and to the world. The sins of the world were not too great for a loving God to show mercy and grace. Jesus came to operate within our lives: inside and outside. We are to carry his mission of love to the world. He (Jesus) said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” (Mark 16:15) We have that obligation and privilege.
As a consequence of God’s great love for us and his command for us to love one another, how then should we live as children of God? We find many scriptures in God’s Word concerning his love for his people and his plan for us to share that love abroad through our actions and reactions. Loving others is so important that after telling his disciples He was giving them a new commandment to love one another, He went on to say, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) He could have selected a number of identifying characteristics for believers, but He chose love. Your love for others will set you apart from the world. Given this distinctive, we must stop and take inventory of our lives. How does one who loves live in an unloving world? Do our spouses, children, co-workers, other drivers on the road, and so on, know we are loving people? Sometimes, yes. Other times, not so much. A little story from when our children were young illustrates our point. We have used it before, but it is good enough for repetition. The oldest three children liked to play school, and as the big sister, Christine claimed the role of teacher. Jeff, second in line, came in one day with a long face and asked me, “Mom, why does Christine always get to be the teacher. Don’t you think if she was a real Christian, she would let me teach sometimes?” Seeing his point, I suggested he leave out doubting her salvation and that we nicely ask her to give him a turn once in a while so he could learn to be a great teacher like her. Fortunately, this appeal worked, and he got his turn in front of the class of several neighbor kids and his brother and sister. People are always looking and if they know we are Christians, they are looking for love in our deeds, not merely in our words. Speaking of children, we learned that our children responded well to the idea of treating others as they wanted to be treated. Instead of handing out harsh punishments when they mistreated each other, we spent time talking about how they wanted to be treated, how they felt when they hurt a brother or sister verbally or physically. We talked about the need to ask God to help us, to start over by asking forgiveness, and trying to find a better way to solve problems next time. We loved seeing how the Holy Spirit worked with their hearts. They came to know the Lord when they were very young, so we did not need to treat them as unregenerate heathens. We read in the Word that we may sin, But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7) This is true for all believers. When Jesus went away, He promised to send the Holy Spirit—the Counselor, the Comforter. He is the one who teaches us, guides us, and helps us become more and more like Jesus in our walking about lives. There is an old gospel chorus that says, “Oh to be like thee, oh to be like thee, blessed Redeemer, pure as thou art. Come in thy sweetness. Come in thy fullness. Plant thine own image, deep in my heart.” This is the cry of a Christian: To be like Jesus. Then we will love as He loves, forgive as He forgives. We will leave no debt outstanding except to love one another.
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