From promise to reality

Deuteronomy 4:1–49; 2 Corinthians 1:17–24; Psalm 32:1–11

This Good Friday reading takes me to a great point in the history of God’s people. They have been delivered from Egypt, but refused to enter the Promised Land because they were afraid. Now, after many years of wandering, they are ready to go in. Moses is giving them final instructions. It is a solemn day.

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children . . . . And (God) declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules, that you might do them in the land that you are going over to possess . . . . For I must die in this land; I must not go over the Jordan. But you shall go over and take possession of that good land. Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden you . . . . know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.” (Deuteronomy 4:9, 13-14, 22-23, 39–40)

Moses warned them about their biggest danger —idolatry. They could not see God, and like every human being, found it difficult to trust something they could not see. Moses also reminded them of the commandments. He didn’t say it, but the first one is the greatest . . .  to love God above all else. If that one is not obeyed, then none of the others can be obeyed.

Loving God above all else means also loving His Son, Jesus Christ. How do I love Jesus? By trusting Him, by believing all that He says and knowing that he is true and reliable. He means what He says, and when He said He would save me, I believe Him.

“For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Corinthians 1:19–22)

Just to help me out, because I believe in Jesus, I am sealed. A seal signifies identity. In those days, and even now, a physical seal can be a blob of wax imprinted with a metal stamp that belongs to only one person or institution. Using that seal puts a mark on a document to verify its contents. To be sealed by God means that He puts His stamp on my life. I belong to Him and to guarantee that ownership, and my destiny, He gives me his Holy Spirit.

This is not all that happens. Good Friday is a memorial to the death of Christ for sin. The psalmist looked forward in faith to the One who would deliver him from sin’s guilt and bondage. Now that Christ has died and rose again, I look back in faith to that event. He died for my sin. It is forgiven, not automatically for He requires confession, but it is forgiven.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit . . . . I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah . . . . You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah (Psalm 32:1-2, 5, 7)

Forgiveness is an amazing blessing indeed. God took the burden of guilt from my life and gives me Himself. I can depend on Him to take care of me.

All of this is made possible because He was willing to take my guilt and die for it. Yes, this Friday is a very solemn day too, but Sunday is just ahead!

Love covers a multitude of sins

Yesterday’s writers conference offered several opportunities to be jealous and feel sorry for myself by comparing my lot in life with others. Yet this time these temptations lost their appeal because those others are incredible people. I had to love them, and love drives away the negatives.

As many cliches as there are about love and how it makes the world go around, the most important saying is this: The key to obeying the law of God is love. But it must be biblically defined. Modern versions of what love means ruins this concept.

For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:9-10)

As my devotional reading says for today, when I love others, I will automatically obey the law. I will not commit adultery if I love someone. That’s because love doesn’t defile others or rob their purity — lust and selfishness do that.

Love not only excludes adultery, but also murder, stealing, lying, and jealousy. If I love someone, my love makes useless the command about killing. I don’t need to be reminded not to murder someone I love. I also will not lie to them. Lies are harmful and love does not hurt people.

If I love someone, I won’t steal from that person either. I don’t need to be told not to steal, nor do I need to be told not to envy them or want what they have for myself.

Love does not replace the laws of God. Those laws are literally written in stone. But love fulfills those laws because by love I can obey what God says. However, if I try to live by the ‘do not’s’ of the law, I wind up breaking it. There is no human will power strong enough to say no to every sinful desire.

That means being able to love depends on Jesus Christ. Because He lives in me, I have Him as my resource for love. He is the one who makes it possible to be faithful in marriage, content with what I have, truthful when I speak, and joyful when someone has what I do not have. Without Him, and without the power of love, I shudder because I know my sinful self and what I’m capable of doing to harm other people.

I’m thankful that God forgives my failings. My desire today is that He fills my heart with His Spirit and His love, and that He keeps me from temptation and delivers me from evil. I need His help to love others and to obey Him so that my life brings Him glory.

First things first

Jonathon Edwards says that God is most glorified when His people are most delighted in Him. The theology behind this is that God alone is worthy of our greatest delight. He knows it, and when we know it, we cannot help but obey the greatest commandment.

This commandment is repeated throughout Scripture. In the New Testament, Jesus was approached by a scribe who wanted to know which commandment was the most important. In those days, they decided that the laws God had given needed to be “protected” from misinterpretation and abuse, so they wrote hundreds of other laws. This scribe may have been confused by all that, or perhaps he was trying to stump Jesus. Regardless of his motives, Jesus answered with this:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. (Mark 12:30)

I’m trying to picture what that kind of love looks like. We use ‘love’ for other desires and even inanimate objects. People ‘love’ pizza and roses and new lawn furniture, but this isn’t about that kind of love. It is about a relationship, an affection of the soul.

Other words are used to express feelings for God, such as fear. This is appropriate (in the sense of awe and respect) but this emotional response has limits and puts me somewhat at a distance from Him.

Trust, hope, and other words also express what goes on in my heart when I am rightly related to God, yet there is some sense of self associated with these words. By hoping in Him and trusting Him, I am thinking also of my own well-being. If that becomes my only reason for trusting God, then it is quite selfish.

But love is not like that. This word covers every other emotion and response. It carries a sense of being spontaneous in wanting to please God. Love for Him motivates loyalty and obedience. It is a personal word. It is about loving someone else and is the most unselfish of all affections. When people are ‘in love’ they focus on the one they love, thinking of little else. This other person occupies their minds and most of their energy. Love for God should be like that, only more so.

When parents love a child, they will sacrifice time, energy, and resources to do what they think best for that child. They will protect and guard them, adore them and even when the child needs discipline, that love remains deep in their hearts. Love for God is like that too, even though God is the one who disciplines and protects.

Jesus used various words to describe how I should love God with all my powers. It should be a sincere love, fervent and intense, intelligent and not blind or ignorant of Him, and energetic. That is, I should love Him with all my ability and with the whole energy of my being.

As I think about this, I realize that even loving God can turn into a selfish motive. When I am loving God, I cannot be fearful, hateful, joyless, or harsh. Love puts me in a pleasant and pleasing state. I am nicer to be around, fully interested in spiritual matters, but also in the lives of others (for that is what the love of God is like). Frankly put, all of that feels good.

But here is the rub. As soon as I turn my focus from loving God with all that I am to thinking more about how that feels, I have stopped giving Him all my affections. To love God excludes this self-focus. This fits totally with Jesus’ words about the way being narrow. It does not take much to fall away from obedience to this first and greatest commandment. When I take my eyes off Him and put them on myself, for whatever reason, I have stepped off that narrow way.

Today I’m nervous about beginning to teach again at Family Bible School in our church. My attention has been on all sorts of ‘what ifs’ and all sorts of fears. When I asked God to speak to me this morning, He gave me this verse and plainly puts these thoughts in my mind: “This is not about you. Turn your attention and affection where it belongs. You cannot obey the command to love others, teach or do anything well unless you first love Me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Do it. I will help you.”

Who is my neighbor?

July 30, 2009 (delayed post, Internet not available in Old Deer, Scotland)

When an expert in the Law asked Jesus which was the greatest commandment, he intended to trap Him, but Jesus gave a response, now familiar to many, that almost silenced him.

Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).

This answer should have silenced the lawyer, but he had one more question. Because of his own definition of a neighbor, perhaps he thought the answer to this question might get him off the hook, so he asked, “Who is my neighbor?”

According to the Jews, a neighbor was any member of the Hebrew race and community, their relatives. However, Jesus was not going to let this man continue to think that love was about family and kinship. He described what love is by using the story of the Good Samaritan, therefore expanding the meaning of a neighbor to any other person, irrespective of race or religion, with whom we live or chance to meet.

Aside from that, some people from this generation don’t even focus on the word neighbor. They assume that this second command is a mandate for self-love and use it in definitions for self-esteem. However, the Bible is clear that people naturally love themselves. We want the best for ourselves and will go to great ends to get it. In fact, sin could be defined as all those self-centered wants and desires for things and conditions that suit us, and our efforts to serve those desires.

Jesus is saying that I am to love others in that same way, as I love myself. I’m to want the best for them and go to great effort to make sure they have it. The words are different, but the idea is the same as the Golden Rule. I should want for everyone the same as I want for myself.

In the story of the Good Samaritan, a compassionate Samaritan takes care of a Jewish man who had been beaten and left for dead on the road. Samaritans and Jews normally hated one another, but this is not so much about loving enemies as it is about putting aside my desires to do the right thing for someone else.

The priest and Levite didn’t do that. They were in a big hurry perhaps, but whatever their reasons, they didn’t stop to help their countryman. In this story, Jesus slams them. Think of it; the leaders of the Jewish religion would not love their neighbor (neighbor even by their own definition), but a Samaritan loved the man, put aside the mutual hatred and helped him.

My devotional writer says this isn’t about stopping to help everyone who has a flat tire, or giving money to every panhandler you meet, but being sensitive to the situation. My husband is like that. We pass many situations like these, and for some of them he says, “God wants me to stop and help.”

This is about knowing the heart of God. There is a love in God that I can experience and pass on to others when I drop my selfishness. His love certainly covers everyone and every situation, but He also has a plan for every needy person. I might not be the right person to help them, but if I am paying attention and listening for His direction, He will tell me, “This one is your neighbor, love this person.”