Matthew 22:34-40 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
The Sadducees were silenced, but they were not willing to back off in their attempt to discredit Jesus before the people and to eventually do away with him. They were the elite in Israel; they represented the segment of the Jewish society that ran the country. The Sadducees and the elders of Israel were willing to profess allegiance to Rome so that their position of power in Israel would be maintained. Jesus and his supporters were a threat to this power structure, so the Sadducees and the elite were always concerned about Jesus and his followers. After Jesus went away to heaven, the apostles were the focus of the leaders’ animosity. The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John and, because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. (Acts 4:1-3) Peter and John were released, but warned about speaking about Jesus, but this did not deter the apostles from their work with the people, so later all of the apostles were arrested. Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. (Acts 5:17-18) Killing Jesus was not enough for these leaders; they felt they had to eradicate this Jesus sect or their authoritative position with the Jews and their favoritism with the Romans might be in jeopardy. To them, Christianity was a threat to their society and to their position of power in the establishment. Even today, Christianity is a threat to the world’s leaders, to their position of power, to the establishment that is in place. Therefore, Christianity is not well accepted by the world’s order. They will either fight Christianity or co-opt it into their way of thinking. When the apostles were released by the angel out of jail, the angel told the apostles to go back to the temple, the place of power, and “tell the people all about this new life.” (Acts 5:20) The message of this new life focused strongly on one point: God is love. The apostles knew that God demanded holiness, righteousness, perfection. Jesus told them how to meet God’s demands on their lives: love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Now the angel tells them, go out and tell about this new life of love. A story that was backed by the power of God, miracles, and wonders of all sorts happened to support the message of the Good News: that God’s love had come to them in the form of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene. He had come to deliver the human race out of slavery—to release them from the Adamic nature.
The story of Jesus revolves around the theme of love. God, through Jesus Christ and his Spirit, has come to people to reveal God’s love for all humanity. We who are Christians are filled with God’s mercy and grace. He has given us his Holy Spirit to express his love to people. We are his instruments of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) Jesus told us to reflect God by doing the will of God by loving others. We do this by the power of God through the attributes of the Holy Spirit. The second commandment stands equal to the first, loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind. The first commandment focuses on our allegiance to God: to love him completely. But the second commandment is our responsibility to others. If we believe we fulfill the first commandment but then do not love others as we love ourselves, we are deceiving ourselves, and the love for God is not really present in us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. (1 John 4:20) Now we can put a footnote at the bottom of the page on this one, for John could definitely be referring only to our brothers and sisters IN CHRIST. So we could consider this aspect of loving our neighbors as a requirement to love only the neighbors who are Christians with God’s love. Sounds good to most of us, gets us off of the hook of loving certain people in the world. We decide to love good neighbors but not bad neighbors, good groups of people but not bad groups of people. How glad we are that the Bible coincides well with our own understanding about people. But then Jesus, our LORD AND SAVIOR, seems to have other ideas about love. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48) Jesus rejects the Bible we write for ourselves where we avoid some scriptures but accept others into the category of what are pagan scriptures. Do not even pagans do that? Pagans are people without God, who will never see God as the light of the world, for they live in darkness with evil intentions in their hearts. We who are supposed to be lights in this world ought not to live as the pagans. James says that even if you prefer one person above the other, you fall into the pagan domain. Otherwise, you might as well break all the laws of God, for you are not acceptable to God, no better than a pagan. How often we scribble out parts of the Bible that do not fit well with our Adamic DNA: our self-willed, self-indulgent nature. We sometimes deceive ourselves by believing God does not see our sinful attitude and behavior, but God knows all, even our thoughts are in his purview. His ways and understanding are far beyond our ways and understanding. Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. (Isaiah 55:6-8) God is merciful to us even though we cross out so much in the scriptures. He still is the God of mercy and grace to those who seek to love him.
If we love God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, we will seek to do his will and to love others as ourselves. We will fall under his authority. We will be his servants to all people. We see Jesus demonstrating servanthood by washing all of his disciples’ feet. Christians who want to be great in the kingdom of God or who really want to serve the Lord with fervor must be willing to be servants to all. This is the ultimate expression of love, God himself. God loves all people, good or bad. They are his creation, made in his image. We are to respect all people and be willing to serve them regardless of race, creed, social standing, diversity. We are not to love the world and the things of the world, but we are to love people. As Jesus told Peter, if you are not willing to allow me to wash your feet you have no part with me. (see John 13) Jesus in his demonstration was revealing clearly God’s love for all people. If Peter would not accept this act of love, he would not be accepted in the Kingdom of God, for he was rejecting the goodness of God to him. As Jesus demonstrated, God’s love demands action. We who love God should be constantly looking to love others with our actions. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (1John 3:16-18) The action of love should be is a continuous flow in every Christian, every day. Not one day should be given to slothfulness, without a concern to serve God thought displaying his Spirit to others: those fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5 that we listed above should be evident in our lives. We are to be controlled by the Spirit of God, not the spirit of the self-indulgent man or woman. We are the light of the world, and without actions of love in our lives, we are dark, blending into a worldly life. Our lives should be different; our association with others should be different. We should display God every day, and we should end our lives focused on loving others. Love must be genuine and enduring. We read a story in the newspaper about an elderly man who closed out his life with his enduring love for his wife. Every day he visited his wife who was in a nursing home. She had Alzheimers, dementia of the mind. He visited her daily, taking care of her needs, feeding her, watching carefully that she was well cared for. In her state of mind, she did not know who he was and sometimes acted out aggressively against him. But he was faithful to her; his love endured to the end regardless of her behavior towards him. Breakfast companions, God asks you to endure to the end, to love to the end. Let God’s love for a broken world shine in your life. We are to love when we are on the mountaintop and when we are in the valley. Let us stand firm, knowing God is love and we are his children who love as He loves. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
No comments:
Post a Comment