Keep On Loving Each Other

Hebrews 13:1-8

Dear Friends in Christ,

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. What a wonderful truth! Jesus is the one eternal, unchanging God. He was there before the beginning. He was present at creation. As one of the persons of the trinity he participated in creating a beautiful and amazing universe. He participated in creating Adam and then Eve who were placed in the Garden of Eden to enjoy all the beautiful things that God had made. He was there when Adam and Eve sinned, calling them to repentance and giving them the assurance that he would become a man and crush the head of the serpent Satan destroying the devil’s work. Despite the fact that the world and even his chosen Israel continually rebelled against him, he remained unchanged. He remained faithful to his promise, and through his prophets, he continued to reveal more and more details about the fulfillment of his promise.

When the time was right, he did what he promised he would do. He became a man. He did what was required to destroy the devil’s work. He lived without sin and then he suffered the punishment everyone deserves for sin when he went to the cross for us. The rejection he experienced while he lived on earth, and the excruciating pain he endured on the cross didn’t change him. He didn’t become uncaring or vindictive as we often do. After he rose from the dead, he prepared his disciples to share the good news of the salvation he had won with everyone, and he promised to be with them always.

It’s now two thousand years later. Many things have changed. We have cars and airplanes. We have computers and cell phones. We have gunpowder and nuclear bombs. But Jesus is still the same. He is still the same loving and faithful God he has always been. His promise, never will I leave you, never will I forsake you, still stands. And because he is the same God of love yesterday, today, and forever, we have the wonderful certainty that he is preparing a place for us and when the time is just right, he will return in glory to take us to live with him forever.

What a wonderful God we have! Even when we change, even when we are unfaithful, he remains the faithful, unchanging God of love and grace. How true it is that we love because he first loved us! It’s that response, that attitude of love producing a desire for humble service that the writer to the Hebrews wants to encourage. This God who continues to demonstrate amazing, unchanging love and faithfulness to us and to everyone, wants us to be like him. He wants us to show others the same kind of love and faithfulness he has shown us. God is love; wonderful, gracious, forgiving, faithful love. God looks for that same kind of love from us, his disciples.

You might have noticed that the writer’s examples of the kind of love God wants us to show follow the second table of the law, the fourth through the tenth commandments. Jesus’ summary of the second table of the law is to love your neighbor as yourself. Your closest neighbors are your family, those who live in your home, and then those with whom you gather for worship, who share your faith in Jesus, those you call brothers and sisters in Christ. The writer says, keep on loving each other as brothers. In other words, “you are doing a good job, now be sure to keep it up.”

This is an encouragement we all need. We all know from experience that, over time, relationships tend to deteriorate. It takes work to keep them strong. After the honeymoon is over and you’ve lived in the same house for a while the rose-colored glasses come off and you start noticing little quirks and annoying habits that you had overlooked before. The same holds true for our relationship with each other as fellow believers. When a congregation is new everyone is focused on the joy of confessing a common confession of faith in Jesus and the zeal to reach others with the gospel. But as time goes on, we begin to lose that focus. We begin to focus on each other’s faults, or on the church budget instead. When troubles come-- for the Hebrews it was persecution, today it’s usually financial troubles-- we start pointing fingers at others instead of looking in the mirror, and brotherly love diminishes. The writer reminds us that, especially when troubles come, we are to keep on loving each other as brothers; we are to keep on seeing each other as fellow believers in Jesus, sinners cleansed by his blood.

But love is not to stop when we walk out the door of our homes or leave the church building. Don’t forget to entertain strangers. As Jesus pointed out so clearly in the parable of the Good Samaritan, everyone is our neighbor. Love is to be extended to everyone we meet. The writer reminds us that both Abraham and Lot offered loving hospitality to strangers they met, and those strangers turned out to be angels. Jesus says that whatever we do for the least we are doing for him.

For these Hebrew Christians opportunities to show love and hospitality may have presented themselves as Christians fled from persecution in Rome and were in need of food and shelter. Still today there are plenty of opportunities to help others; those who suffer from natural disasters, or the homeless, or those who have lost a loved one because of the violent actions of others. If we have personal contact with a neighbor or a stranger in need, we can use it as an opportunity to give them much more than they expected. We can help them with their physical needs as we are able, but as we do, we can be sure to tell them about the unchanging faithful love of God in Jesus.

Probably one of the most difficult things the writer reminds the Hebrews and us to do is to continue to show love to those in prison. For the Hebrews this may have meant risking their lives and all they had. The people the writer seems to have in mind would be fellow Christians who were imprisoned because of their faith. If the Hebrews continued to have contact with these prisoners in any way the authorities would at least suspect that they too were Christians, and they too would be in danger of arrest and imprisonment. But the writer reminds them that these people are still members of the body of Christ and if one member suffers, the others suffer with it.

We probably don’t know anyone who is imprisoned because of their faith, but we often do know people, fellow Christians, who have fallen into sin and have ended up in jail. They need someone to remind them that God has not changed, that he is still faithful to his promises. If we abandon them, they might think that God has abandoned them as well. We are to treat them as brothers in need of love and encouragement.

Next the writer reminds the Hebrews and us that the word love is often misunderstood and misused. Breaking the sixth commandment may be done in the name of love, but it is just the opposite because it puts the people involved under God’s judgment. It can’t be any clearer; God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. We show love for God and for each other when we honor marriage by avoiding sexual sins before marriage and then remain faithful to our marriage partner for life.

Although the world continues to justify all kinds of sexual sin in the name of love, God’s judgment is already evident in many ways; disease, financial ruin, emotional and psychological problems especially for children who are victims of abuse and divorce. God’s great love for us moves us to struggle against our sinful nature and strive, with God’s help, to keep the sixth commandment, and to assure repentant sinners that they are forgiven in Jesus.

Another problem we have as sinful human beings is that we so easily love the wrong things. Instead of loving God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves we love mammon, stuff. We struggle to be content. We fall into the trap of thinking, “If only I had _______, then I would be happy and content.” But if we get what we thought would make us happy and content, we find that it doesn’t really do the trick. Soon we find another “if only I had” to take its place.

Paul learned the secret to being content. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. And the writer to the Hebrews tells us the same thing. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." So we say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?" We will only find contentment when our focus is on God and his promises.

How do you measure up to the kind of love that God seeks? How’s your brotherly love? How’s your hospitality? How are you doing in your struggle against lust and greed? None of us come close to measuring up to the kind of love that God requires. We need help. We need constant reminders of God’s love and faithfulness; of the forgiveness Jesus has won for us. And our unchanging, faithful God provides what we need. Ever since Mt. Sinai when the people asked God not to speak to them directly, but to speak to them through Moses, God has provided his people with leaders who spoke the word of God and reminded his people of both the love he requires and of the love he shows. Whether those leaders are pastors or Christian teachers, Sunday school teachers, parents, coaches, whoever God has put in our lives to share his word, the writer says: Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Accept their loving rebuke and correction which is based on God’s word. Rejoice when they point you to God’s promise of forgiveness in Jesus. Instead of idolizing some sports hero or musician who may lead an ungodly life, pick a Christian leader as your hero. Strive to imitate Abraham who was willing to give up home and family and even sacrifice his son because God asked him to do so. Strive to imitate Luther who said the more he had to do the more time he needed to spend in prayer and Bible study, who stood firm on the Word of God even though he knew it might cost him his life. Chapter 11 of Hebrews has a whole list of people we can choose as heroes and whose faith we can strive to imitate.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. What an amazing God we have. He is eternal and unchanging. His demand that we love him above all things and our neighbor as ourselves has never changed, and it never will. But thankfully, his love for us and his faithfulness to his promises never change either. May the constant reminders of his love for us and our forgiveness in Jesus move us to make use of all the opportunities we have every day to keep on loving others.