Unleashing Our Capacity to Love – To More and Better Loving

Each of my children knows that I love him or her the most and that all the others are just ugly ducks, runts, and trolls. After we had our first little guy, I questioned having any more kids because how in the world could I divide my love for him? Silly me, I found out I didn’t have to divide my love at all, it multiplied with each addition.

We have a tremendous God-given capacity to love. According to Jesus, it makes both a present and eternal difference what we do with that capacity, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also… No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” Matthew 6:19-21, 24 (ESV). The only way to be heaven-eternally rich is for our love to be focused on God and the things of God.

We can do different things with our love capacity. We can use it sparingly or not at all. We can misuse or abuse it. We can shrink or grow it. We can be selective or liberal with it. We can misdirect it or use it as God has intended it. But all of us are prone to love the wrong things, thus the Apostle John warned, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” 1 John 2:15-17 (ESV).

So, what are some things you and I can learn from these two scriptures that will help us with both keeping the proper focus and growing our capacity to love?

• Focus on eternal values.

Eternal values are all connected to God, the Eternal One. Every person has eternal value by virtue of having been made in God’s image. Every person is of greater value than the sum of all of your and my possessions, actually, the net worth of our entire planet (Matthew 16:26). Love in itself is an eternal value, “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love” 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NLT2).

• Love and serve the right master.

Without exception, each of us is ruled by something or someone. So, the question is not a matter of if but of who or what. The right and best choice is to be submitted to God who occupies the eternal throne, whose every decision and edict is intrinsically good and wise. And, Jesus specifically warns us about adopting a two-master solution, serving God and money, or any other master, including ourselves.

• Know what is of the Father.

The greatest expression of God the Father’s love is His Son Jesus Christ (John 3:16-17). The Holy Spirit, who indwells everyone who has trusted in and committed themselves to Jesus as their Savior, is from the Father (John 15:26). God’s written word, the Bible, is a gift from God. All three are meant to save us, transform us, and help us to know God and navigate this life.

• Knowing and doing God’s will

“Whoever does the will of God abides forever,” that makes knowing God’s will critically important. When it comes to God’s will we often start backwards, “Should I marry him?” “Should I take this job?” “…?” Before seeking those answers, and we both can and should, we need to ask ourselves if we are already doing what God has clearly revealed about His will, “Am I loving God above all?” “Am I loving my neighbor as myself?” “Are the fruits of the Holy Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control -Galatians 5:22-23) evident in my actions and interactions?” “…?” It is God’s will for you and me to love Him, to love Jesus, to love our neighbor, to love to serve Him and people, to love Jesus’s church, to love God’s wisdom, to love generosity, to love seeing sinners being saved, to love peace-making, to love righteousness, to love doing good, to love God’s word, to love being led by the Holy Spirit, to love …, to love everything that please and glorifies God.

To God be all glory, and to more and better loving. Pastor Hans

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Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself – Where to Start and How

“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27)

 When it comes to literal neighbors, people living next door, or around the corner, we have had some awesome, some average, and some awful neighbors. I love the awesome kind, but I struggle with awful ones, and yet I am commanded to love them both. Of course, the commandment of loving your neighbor includes more people than those who share my street and ZIP code. Jesus, answering the question, “Who is my neighbor?” asked by someone with a narrow definition of the term, told him to ask a better question, one that will help anyone serious about this most important commandment, “Are you a loving neighbor?”

 Once we settle the “Who is my neighbor?” according to Jesus, questions like “How much?” “What does that look like?” and, “Where do I start?” will pop up. The commandment (which means it isn’t optional in God’s mind) is just one short sentence, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” but covers the what – love, the who – your neighbor, and the how – as yourself. It is a beautiful commandment, imagine if everyone on your street would live by it, what kind of neighborhood would it be? If everyone at your work kept it, what would that be like? If your entire family was guided by it every day, how good would that be?

 Maybe your reaction is, “Sounds nice preacher, but that’s not my reality.” It isn’t mine either, yet the commandment to love my neighbor isn’t qualified by “love them when they love you,” but by “as yourself.” It isn’t a commandment that applies when everything falls into place, when everybody else is doing the right thing. We are called to practice and obey it now, regardless of what anyone else does or doesn’t do.

 The guy asking, “Who is my neighbor?” tried to find justification for twisting the ‘who’ in the commandment, to create wiggle room for his hate, and to legitimize being unloving to some. If we are not careful, we will also twist the second part of the commandment “… as yourself.” It works like this, “I first have to love myself before I can love my neighbor.” Amazing, how quickly we can turn around a commandment that focuses us on how to treat our neighbor, back to ourselves. Nowhere does God command us to love ourselves, we already know how; “as yourself” is the practical starting point of actually loving your neighbor. In Matthew 7:12 Jesus puts it this way, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (NIV). The Apostle Paul, expounding on the commandment to love our neighbor wrote, “Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law. For the commandments say, ‘You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.’ These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law” Romans 13:8-10 (NLT2). Loving your neighbor isn’t some psychological self-help text, it is a commandment that centers us on others. More self-centeredness, more me-focused love, doesn’t make us healthier or better. But, ironically, when we focus less on ourselves and more on others we don’t become less but more.

Jesus looked at his disciples, who knew the commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and expanded the qualifier, “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” John 13:34-35 (NLT2). It’s one thing to love my neighbor as myself, it is quite another to love him or her like Jesus. Jesus obviously thought that both are possible. God’s commandments are never setups for failure, they have His full support, with His help we can love our neighbor as ourselves, like Jesus.

I do know when the command to love my neighbor is challenging, hard to flesh out, even overwhelming, we are free and welcome to, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your child asks for bread, will give him or her a stone? Or if your child asks for a fish, will give him or her a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” Matthew 7:7-12.

            To God be all glory. Love you, Pastor Hans

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Passing the Loving Your Neighbor Test

He knew the answer, but he didn’t like the answer. Any chance that ever happened to you? It wasn’t about anything trivial either, eternal life and the most important commandment were the subject matter. In the middle of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples, an expert in the law stood up to test Him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
 “What is written in the law?” He asked him. “How do you read it?”
 He answered: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.
 “You’ve answered correctly,” He told him. “Do this and you will live.”
 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke 10:25-29 (HCSB).

Jesus knew that this Old Testament lawyer knew the answer down to chapter and verse, specifically Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. He let the lawyer, who was trying to trip Him up, answer his own question. Amazing how quickly Jesus reversed the roles; the hubris of trying to outsmart God will trip us up.

Even though the lawyer’s motives were lousy, and his attitude was adversarial, Jesus acknowledged that his answer was spot on. He should’ve left good enough alone, but somehow, he felt the need to justify himself regarding loving your neighbor. Did he feel an immediate pinch of guilt for failing to keep this commandment? Did the stares of the bystanders, who were all too aware of the rampant hypocrisy of their leaders, birth the need for this self-justification?

He tried to get back on his home turf, to make it a theoretical, categorizing the law kind of discussion. You guessed it, Jesus didn’t let him. Instead, he told him what may be the most widely known story of the Bible, the story of the Good Samaritan, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion. He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him. When I come back I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.’  “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
 “The one who showed mercy to him,” he said. Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same” Luke 10:30-37 (HCSB).

Loving, whether it is God or your neighbor, is never just theoretical. Knowing the command to love and keeping it are two different things. By wanting to know who he could pass by, who he was free not love, he placed himself in the camp of the priest and Levite, which, ironically, was the group he belonged to in real life. Highlighting the goodness, neighborliness, and law-keeping of the Samaritan, Jesus expanded the loving your neighbor scripture found in Leviticus which focuses on loving your fellow countrymen, “your people,” to including “those people,” all people.

According to Jesus, if this lawyer wanted to really keep the commandment of loving your neighbor he shouldn’t have asked who he could bypass and instead answered the very personal question of, “Am I being a loving neighbor?” Not just to “my people,” but to anyone God puts in my path. If we ask the lawyer’s question, we will have no problem keeping our distance even while we quote chapter and verse of the command to love our neighbor. But, if we learn to continually ask ourselves what Jesus wants us to ask, “Am I being a loving neighbor?” then we might actually put our heart, hands, feet, and resources into what is most important to God, to our neighbor, and in life.

To God be all glory. Love you, Pastor Hans

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