Loving Your Neighbor Is Not Easy

Counting college and seminary residences along with the homes my wife and I have had, I have experienced a diversity of neighbors. Young and old, outgoing and hermits, complainers and pollyannas, neighbors come in a wide range of forms. Some were easy to tolerate. Others took an effort to maintain a “speaking terms” relationship.

Those neighbors who share a common property line or apartment wall are easy to define. You see them on a regular basis. You know what vehicle they drive. You know something about their daily life. You see them change as time passes. Depending upon how much you have in common, your relationship with your neighbor will be vary from family like to being on speaking terms with the occasional conversation to an awareness someone is living there but yet you know nothing about the person’s life.

Jesus, however, made this neighbor thing a little more involved and a little more expansive. He basically said if you share the same planet, you have the responsibility to act like a neighbor and act in love.

Mat 22:36-40 "Teacher," he asked, "which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and the most important commandment. The second most important commandment is like it: 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.' The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments."

With all of our rules, laws, and guidelines, the one great power to keep us civilized is love. Laws never made neighbors get along. Laws never made us respect each other. Love, however, born out of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, opens our eyes to the value of others unlike any other influence.

To love God first with all that we are is to allow our love for others to be shaped by that love. Love for God with our total being becomes self-sacrificial, other-focused, and containing a long range perspective. God’s love for us, which came first, dictates how this is all lived out. In the Old Testament we find a beautiful example in the life of Hosea and his relationship with his unfaithful wife Gomer. In the New Testament Jesus reveals a father’s love in the story called the Prodigal Son or Loving Father (Luke 15). The Apostle Paul describes this kind of love in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.

In none of these biblical examples is God’s love revealed as a recipient-controlled love. The giver offers this special love. The recipient chooses to accept it or reject it as a freely made decision. God says here is my love. I freely offer it, but I will not change its nature to get you to accept it.

This led the Apostle Paul to say we can only do so much to get along with our neighbor. Hosea couldn’t force Gomer to be faithful. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the loving father could not force his wayward son to come home. Paul in his letter to the church in Rome plainly says you can only do so much in seeking to show love to your neighbor. Then it is up to them to respond appropriately.

Rom 12:18 Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody.

A follower of Jesus Christ is to express love to God and from that relationship express an influential love for neighbors. In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), Jesus says the concept of neighbor can never be restricted to geography. Being a neighbor is a response to need. Being a neighbor is seeing the world through eyes of love, God’s kind of love.

So loving your neighbor is not easy. It means being sensitive to needs in the life of the other. It means relating in a self-giving, compassionate way. It means to do what you can to show God’s kind of love flowing into and through life to others without compromise or judgmentalism.

No, loving your neighbor is not easy, just Christlike.

Holiness: Legalism or Relationship

To obey a law willingly may mean you agree with it, or it may mean you are trying to avoid punishment. Such may be seen as the difference between a legalistic lifestyle and a lifestyle focusing upon holiness. Outwardly the actions may be the same. The attitudes and the motivations are infinitely different.

Legalism seeks to bring everyone into line with a set standard. The standard is defined by a set of laws, guidelines, or rules. Everyone has to measure up through a slavish obedience. To falter is to bring forth judgment upon those who try to follow the rules but find they cannot pass the test.

When holiness is the goal, both standard and motivation change. The standard is not a set of rules, but a Person. The motivation is not fear but love. The consequence of failure is not punishment but an outpouring of grace.

Followers of Jesus Christ are called to holiness. To be holy in our relationship with Christ is to be set apart for a special cause or association. To be holy in our relationship with Christ is to seek his approval because of our desire to please him out of gratitude.

The Apostle Peter wrote to the early Christians these words:

1Pe 1:14-16 Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant. Instead, be holy in all that you do, just as God who called you is holy. The scripture says, "Be holy because I am holy."

The believer’s holiness does not spring from a decision based on legalistic guidelines. Such holiness does not have its foundation in an earthly or manmade standard. Its roots are in the very nature of God. Holiness is not so much grounded in obedience as it is in imitation. The Christian is to imitate the God whom he serves and that imitation is expressed best through obedience.

The individual believer is called to be holy. The Church founded by the Holy Spirit is also to be holy. That holiness cannot be cheapened through defining it by a narrow set of rules and regulations. It must be held to the lofty standard of the nature of God. Then through imitation the individual and the Church move toward the holiness which is the nature of God and his design for both individual and Church.

Holiness defines one as being set apart. The individual believer is holy before God when he is transformed by the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The Apostle Paul called him a new creation.

2Co 5:17 Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come.

To be holy is to be different from the world, separated in nature though not in presence. Believers, though holy, are still in the world, but they are not of the world. They have declared themselves different by virtue of whom they imitate. It is not the nature of the world they seek, but the nature of God.

The Church also must imitate its God if it is to be holy. It is the Body of Christ. To be holy it must imitate the One who is its Head. Christ was a servant. The Church must serve the world in imitation of its Lord who “came not to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

The holiness of the Church must be expressed as it relates internally among its members. Its holiness must be expressed by the way it relates to those who are not among its membership. As Jesus its Lord lives in the Church, so does he live among those who are outsiders, and he calls the Church to serve “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40) as surely as he did when walked this earth in human form.

We are holy, though not when we can mark off all the rules we have followed. Our holiness is evident when the world looks at us and says, “In you we see the God whom you follow.”

Resisting Satan’s Attacks

We have the one instance in scripture where Jesus is confronted by Satan with real temptations in much the same way we find the temptation story of Adam and Eve. Satan is promising something which is only a twisted version of reality and contrary to the will of God. How do we resist such temptations? How do we fight the onslaught of Satan in its more subtle forms?

 

Mat 4:3  Then the Devil came to him and said, "If you are God's Son, order these stones to turn into bread."

Mat 4:4  But Jesus answered, "The scripture says, 'Human beings cannot live on bread alone, but need every word that God speaks.' "

Mat 4:5  Then the Devil took Jesus to Jerusalem, the Holy City, set him on the highest point of the Temple,

Mat 4:6  and said to him, "If you are God's Son, throw yourself down, for the scripture says, 'God will give orders to his angels about you; they will hold you up with their hands, so that not even your feet will be hurt on the stones.' "

Mat 4:7  Jesus answered, "But the scripture also says, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.' "

Mat 4:8  Then the Devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in all their greatness.

Mat 4:9  "All this I will give you," the Devil said, "if you kneel down and worship me."

Mat 4:10  Then Jesus answered, "Go away, Satan! The scripture says, 'Worship the Lord your God and serve only him!' "

 

Satan tempted Jesus to vary from the Father’s will by appealing to his physical limitations, human vanity, and a desire to take the easy road to life goals. After forty days in the wilderness, Jesus felt the pangs of physical hunger in the same way we all would. Even being God, he was still fully human. Would Jesus use his divine power to satisfy his personal, physical needs?

Jesus got the attention of the people throughout his ministry. He got it through the miracles he performed. He got it through his teachings which on one hand were grounded in the daily lives of his listeners and on the other hand were so radically different from anything the people had heard from their other teachers. Yet his miracles never pointed to what he could do for himself, only what he could do for others.

In the last temptation Jesus was confronted with a temptation we all face so often, settling for the good instead of the best because the good comes by an easier path than the best. Jesus could become Lord of the world by following the easier path of Satan with the cost it would bring, or he could do it by the path set by his heavenly Father. That was the path of the cross.

Satan is there around us all the time in the temptations the world continues to place before us or throw at us. We fail and we give in time after time for a myriad of reasons. As the old saying goes, “I can resist anything except temptation!”

Jesus used scripture to support his determination to turn his back on temptations that would take him down a path away from the will of his heavenly Father. He appealed to the foundation upon which his life was based.

1Jn 4:4 Children, you belong to God, and you have defeated these enemies. God's Spirit is in you and is more powerful than the one that is in the world.

Jesus lived by the Spirit that dwelt within him and made him one with the heavenly Father. We can fight and overcome temptation the same as Jesus did. We have the Bible to give us wisdom in times of temptation. We have the Spirit of God living within us because we have been adopted by our heavenly Father into his family. We are his children. We have the promise of his presence. We will never be left as orphans. We can say no to temptation.

Law and Order by Whose Definition?

We have all heard phrases describing different types of ruling systems. Dictatorships, oligarchies, republics, democracies, constitutional monarchies, etc have existed at one time or another in our world. There is also the one we use to describe the animal world, and unfortunately can be said to exist in human society: the law of fang and claw.

Have you ever heard someone tell another person to act more civilized? What does it mean to be civilized? What marks someone as being more civilized than someone else? Ultimately who has the right to say what is civilized living and what is not?

The book of Judges in the Old Testament concludes with an interesting and perhaps indicting verse.

Jdg 21:25 There was no king in Israel at that time. Everyone did whatever they pleased.

Everyone did what they pleased because there was no king in the land. The implication is that general law had its origin in the throne, and without a king each man made his own standard as he desired.

The word of the king determined the standards for society. For the Old Testament Hebrew writer, the king represented a source of defining authority. The king determined the standard by which society would operate.

As Israelite history showed, not everyone agreed with the king’s laws and commands. The primary role of the prophet was to stand in judgment on the character of the king. It was believed the character of the king would determine the character of the nation. The ongoing conflict between king and prophet became one of the great dynamics of Old Testament history. The prophets never called for an outright rejection of the earthly kingship, but they did seek in every way to remind king and people there was a higher Authority, the one true King of Israel and the world. Obedience to him and his will was above all else.

When the earthly king and his heirs persisted in rejecting the ways of the Great King, then judgment came down upon them. The nation of Israel was punished and ultimately carried into exile and captivity. The nation took on the character of their king and that fell far short of the demands of God the King. With a king with a sinful character or no king at all, the people were left no direction that would carry them into obedience to their true Ruler.

“Everyone did whatever they pleased.” When what pleases one against the wishes of someone else, the law of fang and claw can take over. The one who makes the rules does not do so because of a higher authority setting the boundaries and defining character. The rules are made by the one who is strong enough to force all others into submission. Appeal to a higher authority is irrelevant. Majority thought is irrelevant. Long term consequences and potential future results are irrelevant. All that matters is the immediate acquisition of power and control.

Where no higher power is recognized and each individual demands to have the right to do what is most desired, society becomes subject to the law of fang and claw. Right and wrong become defined by who has the biggest knife and gun. Everyone will have a morality, but the focus of that morality will be on the desires of the individual, the social trend of the day, or upon the dictates of that higher authority.

The more the focus is upon personal rights, the closer we move to the law of the fang and claw. The more we appeal to a higher authority untouchable by the social trends of the day, the more we can appeal to the highest authority of all, a God who has revealed himself in sacrificial love.

Jesus told his disciples on the night before he was crucified,

Joh 14:21 "Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. My Father will love those who love me; I too will love them and reveal myself to them."

Self-sacrificial love results in perfect obedience. Jesus set the example. He calls us to follow.