Reach In

This morning, we take up again our three-part series on the Greatest Commandment. Last week, we considered Jesus’ response to the lawyer’s question, “Which is the greatest commandment?” Though he asked the question in order to trip Him up, Jesus answered him honestly, and truthfully. Jesus lovingly confronted him and all those with him. Jesus answer, gives us a great insight into how we are to live before God, how we are to respond to God’s incredible, amazing love toward us.

We are to love God with every fibre of our being. God is love, and is the perfect definition of love. The world offers all kinds of definitions of love, but since we know and believe that God created the whole world, the whole universe, we turn to Him to understand the true meaning of love. God is all in all. God is the most powerful, most unique, most incredible being in the universe. There is none other than Him. As such, He deserves our love.

And the only way to love God is with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” In this is communicated that nothing is kept in reserve, all is given over to God. And it is not as though we limit our thinking of God, or our love for God to certain days of the week, or certain times of the day. All of every day, all of every hour is given over to loving God.

Now we will turn our attention to something wonderful and amazing about God and His love. Love is not something we keep in isolation. It is something that has to be given. Today we turn to consider the second part of God’s love, that is, loving others as yourself. But before we do that, we have to consider that obeying God’s law is loving.

Obeying God’s Law is Loving

Now, when we think about love, we might not see it in light of God’s law, or even keeping or obeying God’s law. In order to do this, we have to see that God’s law teaches us what love is. As we saw last week, God’s love isn’t ephemeral, merely a feeling, or an experience. Love is particular. Love is doing the hard things, especially when you don’t want to do them. Love compels us to reach up above our ordinary levels, to go far beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary. It is going above the natural and experiencing the supernatural.

The reason we make commitments, covenants, contracts and declarations, even guarantees, is for the times when something breaks, breaks down, is difficult, treacherous, dangerous, and hazardous. Marriage is difficult, raising a family is difficult. Working with other people is difficult. Designing and providing services and equipment is difficult. People are unpredictable elements. People, naturally governed by the sinful nature, are prone to doing things that are the opposite of love: hatred. They do the opposite of loving God rather than keeping His commandments, they break His commandments.

But we know that obeying God’s law is loving. In studying God’s law, we grow in our understanding of how to love Him and others. Psalm 119 is an expression of praise for God’s law. It is the longest Psalm in the book of Psalms. It expresses things about God’s law that we are familiar with—”Your word is a lamp to my feet and light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). But what about verses like this, “I hate the double-minded, but I love Your Law” (Ps 119:113). “Therefore I love Your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold! Therefore all Your precepts concerning all things I consider to be right; I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:128). “I hate and abhor lying, but I love Your law” (Psalm 119:163).

In order to love God, we must love His law. We must see in it more than just a list of do’s and don’ts. We must see in God’s law His love for us, His people. We must see that the way, the path of God’s law directs us toward peace and harmony, with God and with others. We must see that God’s law is beautiful, life giving, nourishing and sustaining.

And so, with this knowledge, we will better be able to avoid the two ditches that inevitably arise in any discussion of the law: legalism and liberalism. A healthy love for God and God’s law avoids the danger of the left, liberalism or anti-nomianism, anti-law. A healthy love for God and God’s law can very easily move one toward legalism, which is obedience divorced from love. It becomes mindlessly rote, it becomes emotionlessly routine. It is obedience to the letter quite apart from the spirit. It nothing more than an exercise of the will apart from the the heart or soul.

It is possible to keep the law whilst hating the Lord God. That’s what the Pharisees were guilty of doing. They had an unhealthy view of God and themselves, such that they didn’t think about God enough, and they thought about themselves too much. What’s that quote about humility? It is not think less about yourself, but rather thinking about yourself less often, and thinking more often about God and others, being consumed less with yourself, and your own wants and desires, and much more consumed with God and His wants and desires for you and for others.

God has given you a gift in yourself. A very real outcome of our world today, and out of some branches of Christianity is a hatred of self. When we consider all the philosophical debate about gender, identity, race, privilege, power, and the like, we must be very, very careful. We have to look at the world, and ourselves, from God’s perspective. The first gift He gave you, is you. He created you. He knit you together in your mother’s womb. He created your bone structure, He created your dispositions, He created you in a way that is unique from your fingerprints to your DNA. He put in you knowledge, awareness, reason, intellect, passion, creativity, love. Because the God of the universe made you in His image, you have value, honour, and respect. Please listen to the Maker, the Designer, the Creator’s opinion of you, and not the world’s. Those who are of the world, are of the devil, who is only all about sin, which seeks the destruction of all that is good. The world sounds wise, but it is ultimately destructive. Only God gives life and has words of everlasting life.

Therefore, as you seek to obey God, by loving Him and loving others, you must also love yourself. No, again I will say it, not in a selfish, self-centred, destructive way. But by accepting that God created you, that Jesus died for you, you were worth dying for. That doesn’t make you all that, it makes God all that. He knew that though you were dead in your trespasses and sins, He called you out out of death into life. Just as surely as He said, “Lazarus, come out,” He said, “Paul come out, Grace, come out, Richard come out, Tom come out, Liz come out!”

You are not dead, you are alive in Christ, and in Christ you are now able to love Him and others. You are to love them as you love yourself. Next week, when we take up our last sermon in this series, we will see more how we can demonstrate our love for those who are our neighbours.

Loving Others

Because we have a true grasp on love and loving God, and how our love for God is demonstrated in keeping His commandments, we turn now to how we put those commandments into practice by loving others. The greatest example of loving others is seen in God. God is Trinity—The Father perfectly loves the Son and the Holy Spirit; the Son perfectly loves the Father and the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit perfectly loves the Father and the Son. Love is meant to be understood and expressed in the context of others, in community, in family.

We love God because He first loved us. We demonstrate our love for Him by keeping His commandments. He puts us into community, first with Himself: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Then He puts us into community with Christ’s body, the church. Who would we love, if we weren’t in community with each other?

God the Holy Spirit builds the body of Christ. He is building this community, this congregation together in order that we would continue loving God first, and so that we can love one another. We all have experienced times when we didn’t love God nor others well, as well as times when we were not loved by others. Because sin still has a grip on us, on our old natures, we need to be diligent in dealing with those natures. Paul describes the Christian this way, “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with it’s passions and desires” Gal. 5.24). Or consider “Put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5).

So, having done that, we will be free to love others. How we do that is described in Romans 12. As we present ourselves as living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service, we see one another as brothers and sisters, members of Christ’s body the church.

Our service is done in community, in family. The first thing we do is to consider ourselves soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. Again, the focus is not on ourselves, but on God and His revelation to us. And, where He has placed us in the community of faith, the body of Christ.

Every human body is made up of many different parts. The body of Christ is no different. Nevertheless, we are all individually members of one another. Think about that. We are members of one another. What happens to you, affects me. What happens to me, affects you. We cannot think about others, talk about others, deal with others, without there being an impact on oneself. That’s a sobering thought, or at least it should be. What we think, say, and do toward others impacts them, and us.

Therefore, let us be careful with our words, deeds and thoughts. Let us be mindful of how we are all in this together. Let us not be careless, but rather, careful. Let us be mindful of how the Lord has created each one of us differently, particularly, carefully, and use our faith in our care for one another: to those called to ministry in ministering—in serving with gifts and abilities, finances and hospitality; to those called to teach in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence, he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.

As we fulfill this commandment toward one another, we set apart that which God has given to us, in service to others. That service begins here. This is the church, the body of Christ, this is where we serve others, this is where our family is. God calls us into His family, and we love His family. Now, many of us have been hurt by family—biological and spiritual, and some were hurt bad enough that they had to leave another congregation in order to join this one. We are all carrying baggage, and so we need to care carefully with one another. Encouraging one another to share, and by doing so, listen, and encourage.

There is another part of being the body that is hard to do. It is accountability.

Accountability

Accountability realises the truth. Accountability speaks truth. Accountability ensures that truth happens. Like a doctor telling the truth of the situation to a patient, we need to be truthful with one another. But we have to be willing to be held accountable. It is easy to try to go it all on our own. But the scripture is clear, we’re in this together and we’ll only get through it together!

Therefore, we have to be willing to let others speak truth to us. Accepting truth, particularly when it reveals the less than beautiful parts of us, is hard. But we must do it!

We are here to speak truth in love to one another. Do not be fooled by the ways of the world which says things like, “You can’t talk about such things. You can’t bring up bad things about the person you are in community, in church family with. You can’t call people out on their behaviour.”

We must do all these things, but we must do so in love. Sometimes being loving is being blunt. Sometimes it is being more circumspect. But we must not give up. We must not grow weary. We must keep speaking, as long as others will listen.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. Love your neighbour as yourself. Speak the truth, God’s truth, in love. Amen.