Tag Archives: love your neighbour

NO DEBT

Bible Study, ,

NO DEBT

“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:8-10.

Paul, you make it sound so easy! Simple, yes, but not easy.

However, this is what the law of God is all about. It was never intended to be a military code of conduct, but rather a description of what doing life together as a family of God’s children should look like.

First of all, Paul said, get out of debt and stay out of debt. There should be no reason to be in debt if we follow God’s economic system, even if we do fall on hard times now and then. That’s what the community of God’s people is all about. Whatever God has given us is not exclusively ours to be used selfishly but to be shared with others according to their need.

In the constitution God gave to regulate the lives of His people, the goal was equality, never the ever-widening gap between rich and poor. Of course, that does not sanction laziness. Rather, it fills in the gaps for those who suffer reverses in the ordinary course of events. Paul dealt with this principle in his second letter to the Corinthian church.

The believers in Jerusalem were in poverty because of famine. Paul campaigned for help from the churches in Greece and now it was time for them to make good on their promise.

“Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. Our desire is not that others be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need so that, in turn, their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.'” 2 Corinthians 8:11-15.

In the end, debt is a slur on the name of God for at least two reasons: firstly, because in some cases, debt is the outcome of covetousness, and covetousness is an expression of discontent. “Keeping up with the Joneses” is a covert way of telling God that He has short-changed me! He is unfair because what He has given me is less than what He has given someone else – so I remedy it by going into debt.

Secondly, I have not done my duty to God by fulfilling my responsibility to those to whom God has told me to give: to Him first because He requires the firstfruits of all my increase (which is to be given to my spiritual authority to support him and his family); my tithe to the storehouse (my local church); my family tithe to take care of my family’s future, and the poor, the alien, the widow and the orphan every third “harvest”.

Of course, sometimes debt is unavoidable, and this is where the family of God steps in to help. Unexpected illness, loss of a job, a natural disaster, whatever depletes the family’s resources is a call for the wider family to come to the rescue until the sufferers are back on their feet again.

But there is a debt that can never be repaid in full – the continuing debt to love one another. Why does Paul call it a “debt”? Why do we owe love to all people? Love is not like a sum of money which we owe someone and can repay in full. It is an ongoing debt to God because of His inexhaustible love for us. We can only repay our debt of love to Him by loving His children and, because He continues to love us, by continuing to love others as long as we have breath.

All the intricate and seemingly tedious details of the Law are intended for one purpose – to meet the needs of others at our expense. Loving others is not about being sentimental over them whether we like them or not. It’s about serving others by taking care of their needs when and where we can, regardless of who they are because that’s what God does for us. 

And it never stops…

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Love Redefined

Christian Life, , , ,

LOVE REDEFINED

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matt. 5: 43-45)

There is no command in Scripture or record of hating one’s enemies in the Jewish writings. What did Jesus mean by the words “love” and “hate”? Was He using it in the same sense as His words in Luke 14: 26?

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his mother and father, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.

Here we have another problem of the Hebrew language. Biblical Hebrew has no way of expressing “more than” and “less than”. Instead, it uses extremes to express degrees of comparison, for example, “love” and “hate” to imply “love more” or “love less”.

Was Jesus, in fact, saying that we should not love our enemies less than we love our neighbour or our friend? This does not have anything to do with the way we feel about our enemies but about the way we treat them.

If you love those who love you, what reward do you get? Are not even tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt. 5: 46-48)

What did Jesus mean by “love”? Does loving those who hate us and have ill-will towards us mean that we deliberately open ourselves to their abuse or, even worse, to the opportunity to do us harm in the name of love? That would be foolish and would accomplish nothing to restore broken relationships.

We have Jesus Himself to show us the way. How did He love His enemies? Strangely enough, He showed His love for them by telling them the truth. Why would His rather ruthless exposure of their hypocrisy be a gesture of love? Doesn’t it seem like retaliation for the way they treated Him? We could view His accusations as retaliation except for one thing. Jesus confronted them the truth so that they could make a choice.

We, so often, tell people what we think is the truth – in love, of course – to express our frustration or to retaliate against their treatment of us. Our accusations are most often a justification and comparison of us against them and their failure to live up to our standards rather than the expression of God’s standard. What made Jesus different from us?

His motive was not to justify or exonerate Himself when they accused Him of disregarding the Law. His motive was to open their eyes to their disregard for what God intended in the His Law – what Jesus called their blatant disregard for the “weightier matters of the law.”

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practised the latter without neglecting the former (Matt. 23:23).

By telling them the truth, they were given the opportunity to come back to God’s way and walk in the truth or to ignore Jesus’ warning and bring destruction down on their own heads.

If anyone hears my word but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day (John 12: 27-28).

Jesus also forgave those who mistreated Him. Love always forgives, no matter how another treats us. Forgiveness opens the possibility of the offender responding to God’s forgiveness. If we give hatred for hatred, we lock ourselves and our enemies into the brokenness that holds the world captive to Satan’s ways. Forgiveness frees us to breathe in the pure air (of spirit) of God’s kingdom.

As sons and daughters of God, our behaviour is to be above that of tax collectors and pagans of whom nothing more is expected than that they treat decently only those who reciprocate decently.

God is generous. He provides for those who never give Him a thought or offer Him any gratitude for His generosity. God acts in accordance with His own nature. His children are required to live up to the spirit of Torah just as He does.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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