Tag Archives: love

Dynamite In A Small Package

Bible Study, , ,

DYNAMITE IN A SMALL PACKAGE

“When he was gone, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will glorify the Son in Himself, and will glorify Him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me and, just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now. Where I am going you cannot come.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.'” John 13:31-35 NIV.

Was Jesus talking to Himself at that moment? Is almost sounds like it, doesn’t it?

As soon as Judas was out of the picture, He breathed a sigh of relief, With Judas gone, the tension in the room lifted. He could now concentrate on what was most important to Him, putting His Father’s glory on display during the coming hours of His passion. It was up to Him to live through those hours right to His last breath in the disposition of the Father — gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and full of love and faithfulness, forgiving sin…

He had another important task to fulfil. This was the moment when He would gather up all the teachings of the Old Covenant into one pithy but powerful instruction couched in three words — “Love one another!” Paul caught the spirit of Jesus’ words when he wrote, “Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law…Love does no harm to his neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.” Romans 13:8; 10 NIV.

There is a positive and negative side to this commandment which Paul sums up in Romans 13. There is no sentimentality in this kind of loving, just practical involvement with others. Here is a simple definition of this love — meeting the needs of others at one’s own expense. Isn’t that what Jesus did? The other side is simply refraining from doing anything that would hurt another person.

There is much discussion, preaching and teaching about what believers in Jesus are supposed to do with the law. It is subdivided into moral law and ceremonial law. Some say that we are obliged to keep the moral law but not the ceremonial law. Some groups teach and practise strict adherence to parts of the ceremonial law, like the dress code and the food laws. Others insist that, because we are under grace, the law does not apply to us at all.

Firstly, we must ask, “Why did God give His people the law in the first place?” For two reasons: To show them what He was like, and to show them how impossible it was to live up to His perfect standards. Jesus was a perfect human being and He perfectly kept the law. We cannot possible hope to live like He did, perfectly loving God and His neighbour.

Secondly, if God knew that we could never reach His standard, did He do away with the standard? No way! What did He do with the law? He placed it and all our debt to the broken law on Jesus at the cross. Jesus gave us a new commandment which perfectly sums up everything He requires of us in three words — LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Now instead of rummaging through the Ten Commandments and all 613 laws of the Old Covenant to find which one would suit the circumstance, we can turn to the Holy Spirit who is in us and ask, “How do I love in this situation?” He not only shows us how but gives us the power to do it.

“And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who had been given to us.” Romans 5: 5 NIV.

Is Jesus command impossible to keep? Not if we love Him. “’If you love me, keep my commands.'” John 14:15 NIV.

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”1 John 4:10, 11 NIV.

This is dynamite in a very small package!

LOVED UP

Pastor's Desk,

Dear Family

I was deeply moved by the video presentation we watched recently which was shown by our visitors from the Gideons. The story line: a lady on a pathway to hell, reads a Gideons bible in her hotel room, gives her life to Jesus, goes to perform at her sched-uled nightclub, finds herself “loving eve-ryone in the room”, tells everyone there what Jesus has done for them, gets fired, goes to a friend, ends up with her entire family now serving God. Really WOW stuff!

What struck me was the fact that she battled to understand at the time after giving her life to Jesus, that she “loved everyone”. Isn’t this just so true? It is very difficult for us not to “love everyone”. It may be that we are angry with someone for a time, but it doesn’t last too long and for-giveness flows as love pours out. Jesus did say it would be like this in John 13:35 “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” The Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Rome, said: “…God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:5). You see, it’s just not possible not to love IF we are true followers of Jesus Christ. This is kind of a catch 22 situation. It al-most seems “unfair”. When someone is really different from us, when we are treated unjustly, when we desperately want to go in for the kill, WHOOSH, an-other wave of love goes surging through us and spoils our opportunity to really get the knives in. Our flesh cries out to get revenge and our spirit, controlled by the Holy Spirit, spoils it all with this love stuff.

John (1 John 3:14) actually links our ability to love to our salvation, and says quite categorically that “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.” Yes, I know, some-times it does seem highly impos-sible to love some people, but when this happens, I always remind myself that God has been there and done that en-tirely successfully. Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He died for me, the unlovable, sinful, selfish one, long before He cleaned me up. Therefore it frees me to allow Him to do the same to others through me.

Whoop! Whoop!

Paul

The Real Test

Bible Study, , ,

THE REAL TEST 

“Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus.’Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?’ He answered, ‘What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?’

“He said, ‘That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence — and that you love your neighbour as well as you do yourself.’

‘”Good answer!’ said Jesus.’Do it and you’ll live.'” Luke 10:25-28 (The Message).

I think Jesus got it all wrong! Aren’t we supposed to accept Him as our personal Saviour and then we’ll go to heaven when we die?

But that’s not what the man asked Him, not what to do to get to heaven but what to do to inherit eternal life. But aren’t they the same thing? Apparently not, according to Jesus.

According to the Bible, whatever we would like to believe, the moment we are conceived we have human life and that life will never end. We live the first phase of it on earth in an imperfect world and among imperfect people. We have been given free will as part of the package of being human and that means that we have choices to make and we have to take responsibility for our choices. Our choices also have consequences which affect our lives and the lives of the people we interact with every day.

Our natural bent is doing our own thing, to be greedy and selfish and to hate God because we fear the consequences of our rebellion. Why? Because Satan lied to the first pair and lured them into disobedience with false promises. Now we live in the shadow of Adam’s foolish choice!

But God didn’t create us to live like that. He created the universe, the earth and everything on it to live together in peace and harmony as a reflection of His nature. In order to fulfil His dream He wanted us to choose to love Him and to obey Him because of our love for Him. But the devil had other ideas…and we live in the result.

But God was not put off. In fact He used these very circumstances to reveal one of the most beautiful aspects of His nature — what the Bible calls “what is heaviest in Him — His mercy.” Because of His mercy, He sent Jesus to show us what He is really like and to pay the debt of sin we owe Him. He took the punishment for our sin on Himself by sacrificing His life for us so that He could bring us back to the Father.

Because He has done away with the reason for our antagonism, God gives us the opportunity to return to Him and to submit ourselves to His authority. Amazingly, when we do that, He reciprocates by giving us His Holy Spirit to live in us. He replaces our old alienation with a new attitude and disposition.  Rebellion gone, we are now able to love Him and to express that love by the way we treat our fellow human beings.

This is what Jesus means by “life”, not endless physical existence but an exuberant life that embraces all people as family and cares more about them than about ourselves. In the environment of God, where nothing out of character with God can exist, everything that does not reflect Him gets pruned off. This is the process we go through as we serve out our apprenticeship in this life.

Eternal life does not begin when we die. It is God’s gift to those who choose to return to His original plan to have a family living together in harmony with Him and with one another in unselfish caring and generosity. This is the evidence that we are truly His family, living life His way here and now. Death is merely the completion of our apprenticeship and the beginning of participation with Him in His forever family in His presence.

Are you someone who had “accepted Jesus” and think you have eternal life or are you really living by loving Him and His children?

That’s the real test!