John 13:35
Dear children, I will be with you only a little longer. And as I told the Jewish leaders, you will search for me, but you can’t come where I am going. So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
Has anyone studied the Ten Commandments recently? I know it’s been a while for me. But in reading them, I came to a keen realization. The Commandments are mostly centered around personal conduct. Conduct designed to keep corporate order. It’s not extremely interpersonal, but instead very self assessing. In other words, the Commandments were guidelines for how to best ‘handle your own business’.
Think about it. Take a quick glimpse: You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make idols. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Honor your father and your mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet. All these instructions lead you to think introspectively. So it’s not at all surprising that when Jesus was asked to list which of the laws was most important He answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all Thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:37–39).
I love this synopsis of Jesus. It’s easy to understand, fair and balanced. Loving God is easy once you get to know Him a little bit. All you have to do is think about His goodness; think about His blessings, and think about all He has done for you, and immediately you can fall deeply in love with Him. And treating your neighbor with a degree of respect and kindness shouldn’t be that difficult for any serious Christian. And why Jesus couldn’t have left our assignment right there I do not know, but just as He was preparing to leave this world to ascend to Glory, he issued a new command: The Eleventh Commandment (that’s what I’m calling it this morning).
This Commandment differs from all the others. In each of the previous ten, the Lord asks us to exercise our best judgement and discernment in following His instructions. But Jesus takes it a hundred notches higher. He not only asks us to follow His instructions, but also His example.
Oh my goodness. It’s one thing to read the scriptures and determine how to fit them in our daily lives. But it’s something altogether different to live the scriptures and make them our lives. Following Jesus is more than passively adhering to a few simple rules. Jesus calls for us to passionately and completely break every rule, ritual, rite, decorum and decree to the benefit of our brothers and sisters. And why do I say that? Because that’s what He did for us.
I love the way the Apostle Paul explains it. He says, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Philippians 2:5-8 Now that’s true unadulterated love. The love we’ve been called to share. The love we’ve been empowered to use.
Applied Christianity as a construct is Love. But how do we demonstrate its impact to the world? In contextualizing our walk with the Living Christ we must incorporate places and spaces which provide application opportunities for both the spiritual and physical. Hearing and doing. Faith and works. Those spaces must speak to the needs and sensibilities of the folk we’re attempting to love. The Old Testament was the administration of law. The New Testament is the administration of love. The flesh recites what God said, the Spirit reveals what God is saying. Jesus demonstrated and executed the tenants of God’s will through his ministry of love. Christ spreads his love through the Spirit to all who are willing to receive. Now it’s our turn. With that same Spirit we are empowered to do the same. Only in loving others are we Christlike.
God Bless
We live in a world where funerals are more important than the deceased, marriage is more important than love, looks are more important than the soul. We live in a packaging culture that despises content." Sir Anthony Hopkins
