Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses? Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:36-40 NLT
I have been looking forward to write this blog as it shares similar ground with last month’s blog “Ministry in Everything.” It was honestly quite challenging for me writing last month’s blog because I would find myself drifting in to writing about this month’s blog focusing on loving others. Perhaps I found it challenging because the Christian teaching and commandment to love God and love others is central to the Christian faith in how we as Christians are to be Christ’s ambassadors. I would encourage you to read “Ministry in Everything” first before reading this blog as it will breathe more insight into what you read here.
Please bear with me through the following paragraph as I am genuinely voicing real life things affecting the church today. To be honest with everything happening in the U.S. right now there has been some pain in my heart for seeing what has been unfolding over the past several years. America has never been so politically divided as a country in decades if not centuries and Facebook particularly has become a place where people shout and yell their own opinions at each other as if they were moral principles. A worldwide pandemic grips the world that has further increased division between U.S. government parties and individuals and a plea for breath as a black man loses his life from a man who swore an oath to protect him. To national news media outlets creating their own narratives and false stories that propel their own agenda and Christians yelling at each other in the midst of a worldwide pandemic declaring “Jesus would wear a mask” or “Jesus would not wear a mask” as honestly I am not sure what Jesus would say in this case. However, I know what he has said and continues to say and that is Love Others.
The American church is presently facing all of these and many more challenges in addition to the world wide church sharing in many similar and different challenges than the American church. One thing that I would say the world needs more than ever and that is love. Could you imagine a country politically united, people on Facebook treating each other with respect and dignity, a people united to end the world wide pandemic, love and healing between different racial communities, national news media outlets replacing 95% of the negative news with 95% positive news, and Christians loving and caring for each other masked or non-masked? Sounds quite peaceful and ideal doesn’t it?
With all that being said I thought to myself, “Why not a blog on Scriptural love?” Because I and many others know the author and creator of love and He gives overwhelming love in abundance. In him there is peace and joy to those who remain in him. This left me with the question what can I and other Christians do during these troubling times, to which this also took me back to the basics being love.
In this blog I began with Matthew 22 being the most important commandment where the Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a question in asking “which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Jesus’ answer was three fold, love God and love others as you love yourself. Jesus’ answer was three fold.
1. He tells the expert in religious law, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” Jesus’ answer was based on one of the core statements of God’s covenant with Israel as to love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind means a love that is all encompassing of ones being.
2. Jesus then declares a second that is equally important being, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus is saying in order to love your neighbor you need to love yourself because if you do not love yourself you will not love your neighbor. Jesus is paying attention to the inward heart posture of a person in love for one’s self because this needs to be second in priority in order to love one’s neighbor. Another way of saying this is if you do not love yourself as God’s creation you will be incapable of loving others who are also God’s creation.
3. Then from your love of God and love of self, you will be able to love others as Jesus illustrates in his response to the Pharisee.
It is from this third point that I want to proceed forward. However, I want us to start with Luke’s record of Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees here as in Matthew 22 to see what Luke as one of the Gospel writers focused in on. In Luke 10 we read…
One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”
The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied with a story:
“A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.
By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.”
Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’
“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked. The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”
Luke 10:25-37 NLT
I love how Jesus responds to the expert in religious law here in regards to the greatest commandment and then asking “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds to the question in a way I do not believe his audience was expecting him to answer the man’s question through the parable. Many of us know the parable of the Good Samaritan, but perhaps some of us do not understand the historical context of why this must have left the Jewish listeners aghast in why Jesus uses a Samaritan as the hero of the story. The historical context of this is found in the Old Testament when the Israelites and Judeans no longer followed the Lord their God and so God executes judgement in exiling them from the Promised Land as he said he would in covenant agreement between God and his people.
After the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC (it was divided into two kingdoms during this time), Assyrian colonists who moved into the Promised Land intermarried with the Israelites who were left there in Samaria; these inhabitants became known as Samaritans. Most of the Israelites that were taken away into captivity, but the Israelites that were left in Samaria were all poor and were to tend to the land. For further context, Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, while Jerusalem served as the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah.
Then later in 586 BC the southern of kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylon. It is in 538 BC when the Judean exiles begin to return to Jerusalem from Babylon and it is then when conflict arose between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Samaritans built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim and used their own version of the Pentateuch (Genesis – Deuteronomy) as their Scripture. Hatred between the two increased dramatically when the Jewish king John Hyrcanus attacked the Samaritans and destroyed the temple on Mount Gerizim in roughly 128 BC. In this “context of mutual animosity, no first-century Jew would expect a despised Samaritan to help a wounded Jew. But in God’s Kingdom, a despised foreigner becomes a helping neighbor!” – NLT Illustrated Study Bible
As usual, Jesus went against the cultural norm where the command to love your neighbor as yourself becomes someone outside of Jewish nationality. A neighbor in Jewish context, was normally identified as a fellow Jew, not a foreigner. However, in Jesus’ context, a neighbor is not only a Jew, but also a foreigner. I can only image some of the shocked expressions on Jesus’ listeners when he gave this parable in stating that the neighbor was not the priest, nor the Temple assistant, but the Samaritan.
What I also really love about this passage as Jesus finishes the parable, Jesus ask the man a question after the man ask Jesus a question as I refer to this as a typical Jesus move. Jesus turns the question on him and ask of the three, who would you say was a neighbor to the man attacked by the bandits? To which the man replies, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”
What the Samaritan did for the Jew who was half dead was not natural. The listeners to Jesus’ parable most likely presumed that neither would the Samaritan help him as did the priest and Temple assistant, but Jesus again goes against the cultural norm and reveals it is the Samaritan who had mercy on the Jew, not the priest or the Temple assistant.
Here is the thing, God is not concerned about societies cultural norms, God is concerned about how we love and care for others regardless of societies cultural norms. Being a Christian means that we as Christ’s ambassadors have to be willing to be bold and step across societies cultural norms in order to love and care for others. Especially when no one else will.
When the Samaritan saw the half dead naked and wounded Jewish man, he felt compassion for him. He used his own resources such as olive oil and wine to sooth his wounds and used materials he had to bandage the Jewish man’s wounds. Then he put the Jewish man on his donkey while he walked alongside taking him to the nearest inn where he took further care of him. This likely involved feeding the man, giving him water to drink, and perhaps even cleaning him. Then with his own money he pays the inn keeper two silver coins and says that if his bill runs higher, “I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.” The Good Samaritan showed compassion, kindness, care, honesty, and love towards a Jewish man who he had valid reasons to hate what the Jewish people had done to his people. How far are you willing to go for others? Regardless of others beliefs, ethnicity, race, or what they have done to you… are you willing to love others?
So what gets in the way of us loving others as Jesus teaches and commands us to do? Well I would say that starts with our hearts in how we look at others around us. Specifically how we judge others whether this is done consciously or subconsciously. Roughly two or three years ago I decided to do an assessment of myself for a week to see how often I had judgmental thoughts of others. I had barely made it three days through and I was honestly surprised how easy it was for me to judge another person, particularly those I had never met in my life. Whether that was driving into the ministry I worked at that present time when another driver would cut me off when it was clearly my turn to go next, to the comments I saw strangers make on Facebook criticizing others they had never met before, but acted as if they were fully aware of the situation, and here I was doing the same thing.
I think what surprised me particularly about that week long assessment I did was how easy it was for me to judge others. It was as if it was a natural part of who I was and until I put a filter on to catch how many judgmental thoughts I had, I was somewhat oblivious how many of these judgmental thoughts I would have in a day. Which also points to how as a Christian I was unaware of the heart condition I had. For me that was a little spiritual wake up call that I was still in the process of dying to self as a Christian and I was in need of Jesus to come clean those judgmental parts of my heart out and instead replace it with love.
This is one of the reasons why I love reading about David’s journey in faith with God. In his young life he was a shepherd of sheep and eventually became a shepherd to the people of Israel. Psalm 139 is known as a wisdom psalm being composed by David and within this psalm he knows God has examined his heart and knows everything about him, and at the end of the Psalm in verses 23 and 24, David invites God to examine all that he is. David finds comfort in knowing the Lord's loving care for him, even before birth. We learn from David the significance of inviting God to examine us and that is a question I want to pose to ourselves, “Do we invite God to examine ourselves?”
But there is also a third part to this examination and that is examining ourselves. In that week long assessment I was taking of myself I was essentially examining myself. Both Jesus and the apostle Paul invite us to do the same. These two examples I reference being Mark 10:17-22 in Jesus inviting the rich man to examine himself as he seeks to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. The second being in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29 where Paul writes, “That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking the cup…” I can write this really long blog sharing Scripture and my personal life examples in order to convey and encourage you of the importance of loving others as a Christian, but until we examine ourselves to discover what is getting in the way, then God’s Word and this blog are of little significance.
In referencing David, I want us to look at one of my favorite passages in the Bible being a teaching moment that God has with the prophet Samuel when he arrives at Jesse’s house to anoint one of his sons to be the next king of Israel.
When they arrived, Samuel took one look at Eliab and thought, “Surely this is the Lord’s anointed!” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them.
People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 NLT
What is significant about this passage is when the Lord tells Samuel, “People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart,” this is a teaching moment for Samuel. God was revealing a difference between him and people. We as people (Christians included) often take one look at a person and judge them for who we think they are whether it is a good judgement or bad judgement. Meaning like Samuel, we look at a person’s appearance, their height, the clothes their wearing, how clean they look, the condition their clothes are in, and the list goes on. However, the Lord bypasses all of that and goes directly to the heart because that is what matters.
So what does this mean for us as people? We as people cannot look at a person’s heart the same way the Lord can because God is the Creator of the heart while we are his creation. A creation cannot know another creation like the Creator can know its creation. However, having said that, we as people can take the time to get to know another person’s heart. Perhaps if Samuel would have spent several days or more at Jesse’s house with all of his sons he would have come to known some of the reasons why the Lord had rejected him.
God uses a different standard for judging than what we as people do. As a result many Christians struggle with this second command that is equally important to the first being “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” I often what the world would look like if we as Christians could truly follow this commandment with our whole hearts? I do my best to follow and obey this commandment, but at times I find myself lacking in love of others. Thankfully God’s abundant grace and mercy are there to meet me in the times I do not properly or fully love others. Thankfully as a loving Father, God pulls me aside correcting me through his Holy Spirit and encourages me for the next time when I can genuinely love the next person that I meet.
Perhaps that is why I cling so much to the Apostle Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians where he writes…
That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!
2 Corinthians 4:16-17 NLT
It is a call to endurance that Paul writes of here and specifically the part of the passage I draw from is our spirits being renewed every day. My hope for myself in the Christian faith is that I am not the same yesterday as I am today. In other words, it is my hope that my faith and heart in God has grown more today than compared to yesterday. My prayer is that inwardly God has more of my heart today than he did yesterday and as a result those around me experience that outward expression of God’s love because he is the one who holds my heart. More of Him and less of me.
In conclusion, I pray and hope that after you read this blog that you would take a few minutes in prayer. Perhaps after reading this blog you feel convicted to grow in your love for others. Consult God and invite him into the parts of your heart where you know there needs to be improvement in your love towards others. Perhaps that is towards your boss, coworkers, your neighbor, the internationals living in your community, the man on the street always asking for money, a friend on Facebook that has different political opinions than you or even a fellow brother or sister in Christ that you do not get along with that attends the same church you do. I have heard it said that one of the core teachings of the Gospel is that God loved us first. A defining characteristic of a Christian is that Christ’s love controls us.
When you look at another person get to know their heart before you take one look and judge them. In the Gospel of John chapters 13:31-17:26 on the night that Jesus was betrayed after Judas leaves the room, Jesus gives his final farewell to his disciples. He teaches them the way to the Father, promises to send the Holy Spirit, reveals that he is the true vine of Israel, how they are to live their lives as his disciples with the difficulties they will face in the world, and prays his final prayer with them. Tucked into a passage of John 15 is a beautiful teaching and commandment that Jesus gives the eleven disciples sitting at the table with him and extends to all followers of Jesus. It is at this point I will step aside and have you read those very words Jesus spoke to the disciples and speaks to you now hours before he paid the ultimate price all in the name of love to take away our sins so that we would have life instead of death. I strongly encourage you to pause, take a deep breath, quiet your mind, read slowly, and listen to what Jesus tells you next. Blessings
Pause – Take a Deep Breath – Quiet Your Mind – Read Slowly – Listen
“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!
This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name.
This is my command: Love each other.”
John 15:9-17 NLT