Passion for His People
Passion for His People:
Matthew 22:37-40 (ESV)
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Mark 12:30-31 (ESV)
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Luke 10:27 (ESV)
27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
This is a commandment not a suggestion! We must love God and we must love one another.
1 John 5:1-4 (ESV)
1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
John 13:35 (ESV)
35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
What kind of love is this? It’s the God kind of love. God can not help but love the whole world because that is His nature. He doesn’t love because of us, He loves because He is.
Romans 5:5b (ESV)
5 because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
This love of God, God’s nature has been poured into our hearts. This is why we can love the unlovable, and unlovely. Because this love is not based on what others do but it comes from God and we love them because we know they were created in His image, and they have value and worth.
In receiving a passion for people, we must look beyond the culture, the appearance, the education the social status to the heart of everyone. That they have value and worth in God’s eyes.
Jesus sit the example for our passion for people, His whole purpose in the earth was people.
John 3:16-17 (ESV)
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Last week scripture about our purpose:
2 Corinthians 5:18-19 (ESV)
18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
This ministry of reconciliation is not about reconciling the earth or nature but reconciling people. Another word that could be used is the word restoring.
Through Christ our duty is to be in the restoration business, restoring people back to God. Connecting people back to their creator.
People are restored back to God through Jesus Christ, not some yoga, zen, mediation or works process.
John 14:6 (ESV)
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Our passion for people must come from our desire to see them restored in connection with God, through Jesus Christ (or through truth).
We must ask ourselves the question what would that person be like “in Christ”? How would they act if they were in right relationship with God? We must began to see them through eyes of faith, to how God intended for them to be in Him.
Paul also makes this very clear on how we are to relate to one another, in and through Christ.
A passion for His people will always lead us to seeing Christ in them.
2 Corinthians 5:16 (ESV)
16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.
Right before Paul begins to share with us about this ministry of reconciliation he says, “That we are to regard no one according to the flesh”.
When a true passion for people comes pouring out of our hearts and lives. We will not look at people accordingly to their flesh, their sinful desires and actions the areas where they are struggling, but according to how they would be if they were mature and walking in the fullness of Christ.
Romans 1:18 – 2:11
Here we see the condition of mankind without God, Paul also makes it clear in this letter, that God will bring the necessary judgment, based on His love for man, and His perfect hated of sin. But Paul makes it really clear that we are not to judge, but to love. Because we can’t judge righteously we will always judge according to our flesh, our bias ideas and ways. He clearly points out here that we have no right to judge because we do the same things.