“New Year’s Resolutions (Matt 22:34-40)" |12/31/23
Matt 22:34-40 | 12/31/23 | Will DuVal
But as we come to the end of another year, we are offered an opportunity this morning to look back on the year that WAS, while also looking AHEAD toward the year TO COME. And while the practice of making “New Year’s Resolutions” seems to grow increasingly more UN-popular each year, I for one still find value in the idea of pausing long enough to reflect, take stock of our lives, and reconsider our routines and priorities in a more systematic, intentional way. Call it whatever you want - a “Resolution” or otherwise - but that is GOOD, even BIBLICAL. One of the most common imperatives we find all throughout God’s word is to “CONSIDER”; it’s a call to think and to choose carefully how we will live.
So how about a little congregational participation; any of you have any New Year’s Resolutions, that you’d be bold enough to share out LOUD? It might even help you - you’re MUCH more likely to actually KEEP a resolution if you DON’T keep it a SECRET. What are YOUR resolutions for 2024? They don’t have to be SPIRITUAL…
[Popular ones…Start working out? Lose weight?]
[Read more books?]
[Anyone - “Read the Bible every day? Read thru it cover to cover? (better resolve to get in COMMUNITY with others! LG, DG… )]
Those are all fine Resolutions. But of all the undertakings you and I could put our minds and hearts, our time and effort toward in the year to come, there are two pursuits in particular that ought to rise head and shoulders above the rest for us, if you belong to Jesus. If you call Jesus “LORD”, that means HIS priorities for your life become YOUR priorities for your life, and Jesus has made it quite clear in His word - in the 3 passages we’re going to read here in just a moment - he makes it absolutely clear what the two most important resolutions HE wants us to commit ourselves to - “RESOLVE” to do - not just in the year ahead but EVERY year of our lives. So we’re gonna examine them both. THEN we need to consider the PROBLEM with those resolutions, or more precisely, the problem with our having been called to make them our “resolutions”. Which will lead us to an examination of God’s SOLUTION to the problem. ALL of which will culminate in our Response to God’s solution for our resolution PROBLEM. I know that’s clear as mud, but I don’t wanna give away too much of the outline before we dive in. So let’s just do it…
-
Would you STAND… Matt 22:34-40; the word of the Lord:
“when the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 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 12:28-35
“And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that [Jesus] answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.”
Luke 10:25-28
“And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 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.” 28 And [Jesus] said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.””
[This is the word of God… SEATED…]
Now, I included all THREE Synoptic Gospel accounts of this conversation because I think each sheds a bit of its own new LIGHT on this passage, and on what Jesus wants to CONVEY to us here. But I recognize that DOING so also raises a few questions, like:
-Was this man a lawyer or a scribe?
-Was he asking about the LAW or about eternal LIFE?
-Why did Matthew omit “loving God with all your STRENGTH”?
-Why does only MARK include the OPENING line of the shema - “Hear, O Israel… the Lord is one…”?
-And who really answered the question: was it JESUS (as in Matthew & Mark), or did he turn the question back around on the lawyer (as in Luke)?
-Basically, can these 3 accounts be harmonized, or were these 2 (or even THREE?!) separate exchanges? Can we TRUST the Bible… its accuracy, in these kinds of details??
I don’t wanna spend TOO much time on the literary criticism, but MY quick thoughts are:
-Lawyers and scribes were synonymous.
-In the 1st c. Jewish understanding, following THE LAW was ALSO synonymous with inheriting ETERNAL LIFE.
-Matthew probably omitted “strength” because he was a HUMAN. The Bible is God’s word, written by HUMANS. Maybe Matthew just ran out of space on that sheet of papyrus. Maybe he just took it for granted that IF we truly love God with your heart and soul and mind then we WILL necessarily love him with all our strength too.
-Likewise, Mark included the shema because he TOO was human. John Mark wasn’t a disciple; he was the later scribe of the disciple Peter. So perhaps as Peter was dictating Jesus’ words to Mark, Mark SO associated this greatest commandment to “Love God” from Deuteronomy 6 verse FIVE with the opening commandment from verse FOUR to “HEAR O ISRAEL”, that Mark just unthinkingly included IT as well. And God, in his sovereignty, allowed Mark to do so, because it’s a good reminder to us to “Listen up!”
-So I think these 3 different recollections of the conversation CAN be harmonized with one another. I don’t really lose sleep anymore over the minute differences between the Gospel accounts; actually, the fact that we have four DIFFERENT Gospels bolsters my belief in their credibility, because they clearly weren’t just in cahoots with one another. They all saw things, REMEMBERED things, articulated things in their own way, as they sat down to write their gospels, 30 or 40 years later. But what they ALL saw, remembered, and articulate is Christ CRUCIFIED and RESURRECTED for our salvation. (Plus, just think how much we would MISS, if we only had ONE of the Gospels… or TWO…)
But let’s get to the MAIN POINT now, of all THREE of these passages: Jesus GIVES us here our “New Year’s Resolutions” for EVERY year, of the rest of our lives; the top two things that you and I ought to RESOLVE to do, day in and day out. And what ARE they? In order…
1) Love GOD FULLY & 2) love OTHERS SACRIFICIALLY. [Repeat]
“FULLY” is what it means to love God with “all your heart, mind, soul and strength” - it means to love Him with every part of your BEING; with all that is IN you. Love God with EVERYTHING YOU GOT! To hold NOTHING BACK, in your love for God.
And as for loving others SACRIFICIALLY, THAT is what Jesus means here when he calls us to love our neighbors “AS OURSELVES”. Elsewhere he clarifies it with the “Golden Rule” - “Do unto others as you would have THEM do unto YOU.” In other words, “If you’ve got TWO coats, and you see someone without ANY coat… give him one of your coats.” (Lk 3:11) Why? Because that’s what you’d want HIM to do, if the roles were reversed and YOU were the cold one. But that requires us to love SACRIFICIALLY; love COSTS us something (sometimes, a COAT!). And if we keep on reading, in Luke’s version of the Great Commandments - Jesus tells a story that elucidates the kind of “neighbor love” he has in mind here. It’s the parable of the Good Samaritan, where this Samaritan hero rescues a half-dead JEW - his sworn enemy, by birth - but nevertheless the Samaritan SAVES this man at great personal cost to HIMSELF - he risks his OWN life to help the man, he sacrifices his TIME, his resources - OIL and WINE, as disinfectants for the man’s wounds - the Samaritan WALKS all the way to the next village, so the battered man can ride his donkey. Then the Samaritan foots the BILL for the man’s stay and recovery at the local inn. Jesus says: “THAT’S what it means to be a good neighbor; loving others as you’d want THEM to love and care for YOU.” Doing it SACRIFICIALLY.
And “ON these two commandments”, Jesus says, “hang all the Law and the Prophets.” In other words, every ONE of the 613 commandments of the OT - the “Law and Prophets” - all 613 can in SOME sense be summarized and categorized, as we saw last spring in our study of the Book of Exodus - all of the Law is really encapsulated in God’s “Top Ten” list; the 10 Commandments:
1) “Keep God FIRST”.
2) No IDOLS.
3) HONOR God.
4) Honor His SABBATH.
5) Honor your PARENTS.
6) Don’t MURDER.
7) Don’t commit ADULTERY.
8) Don’t STEAL.
9) Don’t LIE.
And 10) Don’t COVET.
We can consolidate the 613 OT laws down into just those 10. But then according to JESUS here, we can even further condense those TEN down into just TWO: the first FOUR commandments are really summarized in the command to “Love God FULLY”, and the last SIX commandments really boil down to this: “Love Others SACRIFICIALLY”.
So when we come to a passage, like Ephesians 2:10, for instance, where we ended LAST week, with Paul’s reminder that “we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them,” and we recognize that the reason you and I have been put here ON earth BY God our Creator is “FOR GOOD WORKS” - then the next logical question we should ask is “What ARE these “good works” which God has “prepared” for us to “walk in”?” And Jesus provides the ANSWER here, in just FOUR WORDS:
LOVE GOD, and 2) LOVE OTHERS.
So these two “Great COMMANDMENTS” are more than just a couple “nice resolutions”, to aspire to, in our FREE time; they are our very reason for EXISTENCE… our life’s PURPOSE… this is why God PUT us here on earth: to Love Him and Love HIS.
Moreover, if we would just DO it - like Jesus says there in Luke 10: “DO this, and you will LIVE”; you’ll INHERIT the eternal life that you’re seeking, Mr. Lawyer”. And the same is true of US: if we would just love God fully and love others sacrificially, consistently, then we could inherit eternal life, because we’d be keeping God’s LAW - all 613, summarized in the 10, summarized in the TWO. And God promises all OVER the place in His word that IF we keep His Law, we will LIVE… he will BLESS us.
Now, if West Hills was one of those liberal churches that somewhere along the way stopped preaching the GOSPEL, and now they just preach a kind of distorted, pseudo-Christian MORALISM (“Just try your best to be a good person and surely God will accept you”) - if we were one of THOSE churches, then I could just end the sermon right HERE. It’d be a MUCH shorter message (as theirs typically ARE) and I’d just send us out to go “love God and love others”. End of story.
BUT… (and you KNEW there was a BUT…)
There’s a PROBLEM. WE have a problem.
And here’s the problem: We DON’T actually LOVE like this, do we? Does anyone here love God FULLY - with ALL your heart, mind, soul and strength; do you give it ALL to him - and do you consistently love others sacrificially, the way JESUS would, the way Jesus DOES love them. Anyone here DO that? Love God and neighbor PERFECTLY?
Of course not. And Jesus leaves us three subtle but not really all that subtle HINTS in these three texts - one per passage - that make it clear that a sermon like this CANNOT just be as simple and straightforward as a 15-minute pep talk: “Jesus says, ‘Love God & others’; let’s all just resolve to go DO it. Amen, Go in Peace.” No! That CAN’T be the whole take-home message here, because that IS NOT all that’s going on in these TEXTS, if we look a little closer. We get three hints, at our PROBLEM, our LACK of love.
The first is in Matthew 22:40, the last verse of Matthew’s version of this exchange. Where - as we’ve already pointed out - Jesus emphasizes that “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Now, from that, we extrapolated already that God’s CALL to obey Him, the 613 distinct commandments he delivered in the OT, is REALLY just a call to LOVE Him and love others. But ANOTHER truth we glean here is that - in the same way - to the extent that we VIOLATE ANY of those 613 commandments, we have really in ESSENCE violated God’s ultimate call to Love Him and Love Others! As the NT writer James put it: “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in [just] one point has become guilty of all of it” (2:10). And the REST of the New Testament makes it clear that that’s exactly what you and I have DONE - we have VIOLATED God’s Law, His perfect Law of LOVE:
Romans 5:12 “death spread to all men because all sinned”
1 John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
And most thorough of all, Romans 3:
“ALL, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one…
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside…
no one does good,
not even one.”
...”Their mouth is full of curses.”
…“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
…in their paths are ruin and misery,
… “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law NO human being will be justified in his sight… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (3:9-23)
The SECOND hint that we don’t actually love the way God has called us to is found in Mark 12, and v34 in particular. This is such a fascinating, RICH exchange. Notice the POWER dynamics at play here. Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus has already SILENCED the Sadducees. THEY had tried to trick him just prior to this exchange, with a riddle about the resurrection. But he shut THEM up. So NOW the PHARISEES huddle up, and put their heads together, and come up with a question they are SURE is gonna stump Jesus. Cuz how could you possibly pick just ONE COMMANDMENT as the “greatest” out of 613?! No matter WHAT Jesus picks, they think, they will be able to criticize him for IGNORING the other 612! So they elect the most CLEVER lawyer of them all - a professional, a guy who has devoted his entire LIFE to studying the ins and outs, the nuances of the OT Law - they pick HIM as their spokesperson, to embarrass Jesus. This uneducated, backwoods, blue collar, son of a carpenter POSING as a rabbi. You can almost HEAR the SARCASM in the lawyer’s voice when he addresses Jesus as “TEACHER”...
But then to their AMAZEMENT, Jesus not only ANSWERS their question; he ACES it. Jesus manages to perfectly summarize the entire OT, in just two great commandments. The Pharisees couldn’t have done it better themselves; in fact, they didn’t think it was POSSIBLE! And yet they can’t deny Jesus’ GENIUS. So what does the lawyer do now in response? “If you can’t BEAT ‘em…”
JOIN ‘em! “So the scribe said [BACK] to [Jesus],
**[Clears Throat…]** “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that [God] is one, and there is no other besides him…”, and then he proceeds to just regurgitate Jesus’ answer, pawning it off as HIS OWN, as if he KNEW the answer all along, and he was just testing Jesus. And in doing so, he reasserts HIS authority OVER Jesus. He presumes to be in a place to judge Jesus’ answer; HE is the rabbi, HE is the expert, the one authorized to speak authoritatively on the Law, while JESUS is just the student, the one being quizzed. You see that? This lawyer is trying to put Jesus back in his PLACE.
But watch how JESUS responds now in v34: “Jesus said to him, “You are not FAR from the kingdom of God.”” “You might think you’re the authority on the LAW, but I AM the authority on God’s kingdom,” on eternal life in Heaven and who makes the CUT, and by the way: “You’re CLOSE, but you’re not quite THERE.”
Jesus is telling this Pharisee, “You’re missing the Kingdom by exactly 18 inches - the distance between your HEAD… and your HEART.” The lawyer answered WISELY; he agreed with Jesus, he KNOWS the most important commandments to keep. But as Jesus admonished the Pharisees elsewhere: ““‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me.” (Matt 15:8)
You’re NOT FAR from the kingdom; if you’d just ACT on your stated BELIEFS, you’d be fine. If you’d just love God fully and love others sacrificially, you’d be IN. But those 18 inches.
Friends: how many people, do you think, are gonna MISS HEAVEN by just 18 inches? They know all the right Sunday school answers. But what’s in their HEART? And in their HANDS - do they actually ACT on those beliefs they profess?
The third clue that we don’t actually make the cut by loving like we’re supposed to comes in Luke 10:28. Where Jesus affirms the lawyer’s answer - “You’re right; you GOT it: Love God and love neighbor; well done” - but then he ADDS: “DO this, and you will live.””
But we KNOW that Jesus is hinting here that the man DOESN’T actually “DO this” - that he DOESN’T love God and people - because of the very next verse, if we read on. It says, “But [the LAWYER], desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”” Clearly there was something about Jesus’ tone that made it obvious to the lawyer that Jesus DIDN’T think the guy was loving people well enough to earn eternal life, on his own. Because he got DEFENSIVE; he felt the need to JUSTIFY himself: “Okay, Jesus, who DON’T you think I love.” The lawyer probably had a mental list ready, of all his neighbors’ names - his literal neighbors, on every side of his house; “I love them ALL! Cuz I’m a good PERSON!” But then Jesus hit him with the parable of the Good Samaritan. To prove to him that “You don’t actually love AT ALL. Sure, you love your friends; Whoop-dee-doo; even the TAX COLLECTORS do that! But do you love YOUR ENEMIES?” SAMARITANS?
Here’s the problem, friends: “The kind of love that must issue from us - the kind of love that can inherit eternal life FOR us - does NOT originate within us.”
Let me repeat that. Because I take Jesus at face value when he says that he wants us to Love God & Love Others. That’s a COMMAND that he wants and expects and CALLS us to OBEY.
And I even take Jesus literally when he says, “DO this, and you’ll LIVE; you will actually inherit eternal life.” I think we WOULD, if we DID.
But the problem is: we DON’T. And the kind of love that must come FROM us, that is required for us to inherit (to EARN) eternal life - consistent, sacrificial, unconditional, enemy-cherishing, PERFECT love - THAT kind of love simply does NOT originate within us.” We don’t LOVE like that, on our own.
But here’s where we get to God’s SOLUTION: He DOES love like that! God DOES love perfectly, because God IS perfect LOVE. Love isn’t just something God DOES; it’s who he IS, 1 John 4 says. And then that SAME chapter - 1 John 4 - gives us the solution to OUR love problem, when it says that, “We love because [JESUS] first loved us” (4:19).
In OTHER words, despite having CREATED us to love Him and love others, God saw that we were BROKEN - “mouths full of curses… feet shedding blood… [leaving trails] of ruin and misery” - so God said: “I’m gonna give you a LOVE TRANSFUSION. I’m gonna give you something even BETTER than the ability to love me and others with your love; I’m gonna fill you with MY OWN love!” Because let’s be honest: what do the people in your life need more: YOUR love… or GOD’S love, flowing THROUGH you?!
And how does he DO it? How does God FILL us, with His love? 1 John 4 answers that too. Let’s actually read the whole paragraph, because it’s probably one of the most important sections in all of Scripture; these truths are ASTOUNDING; John writes:
“Beloved, let us love one another, [same calling JESUS gave us; in the SECOND great commandment, John reiterates here. But then he adds:] for love is from GOD, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. [In other words: the only way you’re gonna BE ABLE to actually love one another, is to GET that love… FROM GOD, who is the source of ALL true love. Then he ADDS:] 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. [There it is. And now WATCH THIS. He’s gonna answer the question of how we RECEIVE God’s love. He says…] 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, [or “made KNOWN TO us…] that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, NOT that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son [JESUS] to be the propitiation [the SACRIFICE] for our sins.” (7-10)
How did God make his love “MANIFEST among us”, KNOWN to us, AVAILABLE to us?? It was through JESUS, and specifically, through his death on the cross, to pay for our sins and bring us BACK into relationship with God, our loving, but HOLY heavenly father. Who could not - WOULD not - TOLERATE sin. Who had to DEAL with our sin problem, our FAILURE to love Him and others and thus fulfill the perfect Law of God. So he sent JESUS - His perfect SON - to live the life of love we failed to, then in the ultimate act of love, DIE the death that we deserved as a rightful RESULT of our sin, sacrificially, in our place. And then, as proof that his love conquers ALL, Jesus rose from the dead to overthrow death “so that WE TOO might live through Him”. Friends, in THIS is LOVE: “not that WE loved GOD, but that HE so loved us that he sent his Jesus to DIE for US.”
In other words, God’s SOLUTION for our love problem, is that We MUST BE loved by HIM. God really does want us to pour love OUT, to Him and others, but FIRST it’s gotta come IN before it can flow OUT. So John continues on:
“11 Beloved, if God so loved us, [enough to send us JESUS… then] we also ought to love one another… if we love one another, [then we know that] God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” Cuz that’s the only way that we CAN truly love: is to be filled with HIS love. “We love [we can ONLY love…] because he first loved us.”
Do you know that every ONE of your love problems - your failures to love - you would love God and others PERFECTLY, if you truly knew, to your CORE, every SECOND of the day, just how much God loves YOU. The extent to which you love God and others is 100% directly proportional to the amount of love you ACCEPT from God.
We ALL know the CONVERSE is true. We see THAT all the TIME, don’t we? How are BULLIES made? Why do SOME people treat OTHER people like garbage? Cuz deep down, a bully believes that HE’S garbage. And when you feel like a piece of TRASH, sometimes the only way to feel MARGINALLY less terrible, is to pull others in the dumpster WITH you, so at least you’re not ALONE.
But consider the opposite: this was God’s solution for a world full of lost, hurting, sad, broken BULLIES who were mistreating each other; God said, “I’m gonna show you EXACTLY how much you’re worth to ME; I am willing to give up my ONLY SON for you! I want relationship with YOU that badly.”
And friends, when we truly BELIEVE it, RECEIVE His love, we WILL respond in two ways: #1 - we’re gonna love God BACK, in return; cuz how can you NOT love someone who loves you that much, that sacrificially, that perfectly?!
And #2 - we will love EACH OTHER. Because we not only begin to see OURSELVES as INFINITELY valuable, made in the image of God, CHILDREN of God - but we start to see OTHERS that way as WELL. And when we see each other through GOD’S eyes, the way that GOD sees us, we can’t HELP but be filled with love.
But it all starts with our BEING loved by God. So I wanna suggest that we actually REVISE our resolutions, and instead of resolving to love God and others this year, let’s just resolve to BE loved by God. We have already BEEN loved; God’s already PROVEN it; the CROSS is all the proof we need! - all’s that’s left is for us to RECEIVE His love.
So I’m gonna suggest a very simple, practical application point here. I wanna invite you to get your PHONES out - right now - and set a daily, recurring ALARM on your phone, for whatever time you wake up - 6:45, 6:15… 5:45, some of you masochists… - and where you can “NAME” that alarm, type in: “Jesus DIED for me. Receive God’s love.” Let that be the very first thing you are reminded of every single day: the GOSPEL - that God loved you SO much he sent Jesus to the CROSS for you - but then you’ll ALSO be reminded of his INVITATION, his DAILY invitation, to RECEIVE that love all over again. I’m not talking about “inviting Jesus back into your HEART” every single day; I’m talking about being FILLED ANEW with a fresh measure of God’s LOVE for you. That you can then offer BACK to Him throughout the day, and give away to OTHERS as well.
Cuz WITHOUT that, let’s be honest: we Christians are just as much a part of the PROBLEM as anyone, aren’t we? This drastic love SHORTAGE that we experience all around us in this world. Without God’s love at work within us, we’re no better.
But brothers and sisters: God created us - and he has RE-created us; made us NEW creations in CHRIST - in order to FILL us with His love, that we might be INSTRUMENTS, CONDUITS of it, everywhere we go.
And that is our final point, now in closing; our RESPONSE, to God’s SOLUTION - that he “first loved US”, in Christ, and has FILLED us with His love; how do we now RESPOND?
By OBEYING God & SERVING others.
BECAUSE God loves us and fills us WITH his love, you and I - if we HAVE truly been changed from the inside out by God’s love - we really can now RESPOND to His love… by LOVING. Loving GOD, and loving OTHERS. And according to God’s WORD, what it MEANS to love Him is to OBEY him.
We read so much of 1 John 4. But in the very NEXT chapter, John actually defines for us: “this is the love of God, [this is what it MEANS for us to love God…] that we keep his commandments.” (1 John 5:3) OBEDIENCE.
John was just quoting JESUS. Who had already told us ““If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (Jn 14:15)
Because love isn’t just a FEELING; love is ACTION. Putting your money where your MOUTH is. Putting your heart and your HANDS where your HEAD is; it’s acting in accordance with what we KNOW to be true, about God, and his commands for us. They’re for our GOOD! His Law is LOVE - it promotes love and LIFE to the fullest, to the extent we actually OBEY God’s commands.
Similarly, we love OTHERS actively, by SERVING them. At the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan, there in Luke 10, Jesus asked the lawyer: “Which of these three, [I skipped over it, but there was a Jewish PRIEST, who passed by the beaten man on the side of the road, then a Jewish LEVITE, who turned a blind eye to him, before finally the SAMARITAN dismounted to help him; so Jesus asked: Which of these THREE] do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” [Who TRULY LOVED the man?] 37 [The lawyer answered], “The one who showed him mercy.” So Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.””)” (36-37)
Friends: to love is to SERVE. To show MERCY.
And we really can DO it now… we SHOULD do it… we MUST do it - loving is the reason we’re HERE! The “good works” God has prepared for us to “walk in”. But we can ONLY do it to the extent that we are filled with GOD’S love, for US.
It is telling that Jesus calls us to “love your neighbor AS YOURSELF”, isn’t it? Because he knows that we are only able to love others to the extent that we’ve actually accepted GOD’S love for OURSELVES, first.
[[**CONCLUSION**]]:
Have YOU? Do you KNOW how much your heavenly Father loves you? Do you BELIEVE it, REALLY believe it? Have you RECEIVED it?
Only then will you be able to RETURN it to God and others.