It is amazing how we humans like to rank and rate things. If you’re not first your last… We want to have the best products if possible. If not the best, we certainly don’t want the worst.
The Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ day were not strangers to the ranking and rating game. They had greater and lesser prophets. They were also interested in ranking the commandments. One day as others were trying to trip Jesus up in something he might say, an expert in the law joined in.
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew22:36–40NIV
According to Jesus, the greatest commandment is to love God. Quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, Jesus points us to something very important. God is not interested in us simply keeping rules or the law. God wants us to love him with all our heart, soul, and mind… essentially all that we are.
Next Jesus ranks loving our neighbor the way we would love ourselves as the second greatest commandment. Not just the neighbor that lives next door, but anyone that we may encounter in life as was pointed out in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We are to love those who God loves (that’s everybody) the way we love ourselves.
These two commandments are so important that Jesus said everything else in scripture hangs on them. That seems to put them far and ahead of the big ten and the hundreds of other commandments in scripture.
If we want to please God, we must love him with all that we are, and love others as much as we love ourselves. Nothing else is more important.
Prayer: Dear loving God, help me to love you and those you love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
If you ever wondered what the essence of our faith is you should read 1 John 4. In it we understand that we are, as God’s children to be loving. We are to love one another. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” 1 John4:7NASB1995 John even goes so far as to say if we don’t love others, we don’t even know God because, God is love.
It is a given that we should love our brothers and sisters in Christ. We have that familial language… we are children of God, thereby brothers and sisters to others who have been born again. Knowing how families work, it is an unspoken norm that we should love one another no matter what.
John shows us how God loves and that is how we should love. “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John4:9–11NASB1995
What John is saying is God loves first and so should we. God didn’t wait until we found him and pursued him to love us, he loved us first and so much so that he sent Jesus to pay the price for our sins. It is what we affirm when we celebrate Holy Communion. “Hear the good news: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God’s love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!”1
We are to love God because God is love and God first loved us. We are to love those in the family of God, those who are born again to be children of God, not because we always agree with them or even like them, but because they are our family. We are to love others and not just as a reciprocation of their love, we are to love them even if they don’t love us, because God, our Father, loves first.
Brothers and sisters, our faith is about love because God is love. Let us be like our Father and love others as God has loved us!
Prayer:
God thank you for your love! Help me to love others, even the unlovable. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus had just fed five thousand people in Mark 7 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. The disciples were there. They saw and participated in the miracle. In Mark 8 they see Jesus take 7 loaves of bread and feed four thousand people. The disciples saw this miracle and participated in it too. However, when they were in the boat heading to the other side of the lake, the disciples were concerned about not having enough bread.
Jesus overheard them discussing this and makes a statement that gives us some important insights. And Jesus, aware of this, *said to them, “Why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces you picked up?” They *said to Him, “Twelve.” “When I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of broken pieces did you pick up?” And they *said to Him, “Seven.” And He was saying to them, “Do you not yet understand?” Mark8:17–21NASB1995
Hardheartedness keeps us from recognizing who God is, and understanding what God is doing. The disciples saw what Jesus did. They heard what he said, but they did not yet see or understand who they were following.
The remedy for this is to ask God to give us a tender heart, eyes to see and ears to hear. That means that God has to move us past our pride so that our hearts are not hard. It also involves remembering what God has been doing in our lives and in the life of our church. Jesus reminded the disciples of the miracles they had just seen. Remembering what God has done in and through us helps us to see God’s leading and direction through the miracles we have seen and witnessed.
Having a tender heart and remembering what God has done in us and through us helps us see the spiritual reality and not be stuck in the temporal. When we have trouble recognizing Jesus and the spiritual, we need to humble ourselves and ask for eyes to see and ears to hear.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you for the miracles that show me who you are and what you are calling me to be. When the temporal world that I experience through my five senses, encroaches upon the spiritual, help me to have eyes to see and ears to hear what you are doing in me and around me. Amen.
If you have ever tried to grow a garden, you realize there is a mystery to it. It is possible to do everything right, as far as you know, and still not produce much of a crop. It is also possible to put the seed in the ground and not do much more than that and have a bountiful harvest. We partner with God when we plant and garden. You can’t go wrong in asking God to bless your efforts.
In Mark 4, Jesus is explaining the Kingdom of God to his disciples. And He was saying, “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” Mark4:26–29NASB1995
In this parable, Jesus teaches us an important truth. It is God that gives growth to the Kingdom. We certainly have a part in it. We are called to be in faithful relationship with our Heavenly Father. That means as an expression of our love for the Father, we join him in what he leads us to do. However, we must remember that Kingdom growth comes as a result of God’s mysterious and miraculous power at work in us and through us. God calls us to step out in faith and join him where he leads. We step out in faith in some tangible way. God blesses that miraculously with spiritual growth in our lives and in the life of our church family.
We must be careful not to ever think that it is our work alone, our efforts alone, that bring the growth. We must never think our efforts are the bigger part of what is happening in the Kingdom of God. Our faith, our efforts, are tiny mustard seeds that when sown, God gives phenomenal growth. Reading the Bible apart from God is confusing. Loving your neighbor apart from God is tedious and can become a way to satisfy a prideful desire for recognition. Apart from God, sharing the Gospel can become a way to satisfy a prideful desire for recognition for a church or denomination… “look at all the people we got saved.”
As an expression of our love for the Heavenly Father, we go and do what we are called to step out in faith to do. We are filled with wonder and awe when we see the Kingdom growth that God mysteriously and miraculously produces in our own lives and in our churches. By joining our Heavenly Father in what he is doing in and through us, we come to love him more and more.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, thank you for calling me to your love through your Son Jesus Christ. Thank you for the mysterious and miraculous Holy Spirit at work in my life. Help me to step out in faith to experience more of your love and power. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
In Titus 2 the Apostle Paul is giving Titus instructions to pass along to the people Titus serves. There are instructions for older men and women, for younger men and women, even for slaves as they serve their masters.
The Apostle Paul says that the grace of God is “training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” Titus2:12-13NRSV
Those verses say several things to me. First, God is training us. It isn’t something that we get instantly when we get saved. It is something that takes a long time, possibly a lifetime. Second, we are all called to live lives “that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.” Lastly, we are all waiting for our blessed hope to appear, “our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
We know who we are called to be. God is training us continually to be who we are called to be. We know that there is a day when all of our struggles will be over… the day when our Lord is revealed!
Prayer:
God, thank you for the grace you brought to us all through Jesus Christ. Thank you for training us to be who you are calling us to be. Thank you for the blessed hope we have in the return of Jesus Christ! In Jesus’ name, Amen.
In college, a Greek professor made a shocking statement that sent me to my Bible to prove him wrong. I had my faith challenged. It is a good thing to have our faith challenged, if we dig into God’s word and examine what we believe. As a result, we may change what we believe to more accurately reflect what the Bible teaches, or we may confirm what we already believed. Either way, the process is good for us.
My faith challenge began with the belief in a pre-tribulation rapture. I have since come to embrace the historical view of the church on the second coming. I am looking for Christ to literally come in the clouds. You can read more about that in my devotion Rapture or Day of the Lord.
In studying about the rapture, I was also challenged in what I believed about once saved always saved (OSAS). I kept running into scriptures that caused me to question it. If we were always saved once we embraced the grace offered to us by God in Christ, why did Jesus warn us not to deny him before men. In his predictions about the Day of the Lord, Jesus said, “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.” Matthew10:32–33NIV
In 2 Timothy 2, the Apostle Paul gives Timothy a similar warning that must have been in common use in the church. He says, “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” 2 Timothy2:11-13NIV There are other places in the New Testament that call OSAS into question as well.
Someone is already thinking of “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” John10:28NIV Others may be remembering, “…When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians1:13–14NIVI agree with them and those verses. As far as it depends on God, we are secure. However, the verses in 2 Timothy 2 that Paul said was a trustworthy saying, indicate we have a choice in the matter even after we have received the grace of God offered in Jesus Christ.
“If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” We embrace the grace of God by faith in Jesus Christ. We identify ourselves with the atoning work of Christ on the cross and in the resurrection so we will live with him. If we endure, we will reign with him. However, if we decide to disown Christ, he will disown us. That is a pretty serious warning.
I want to point out that it isn’t backsliding. I believe the last part of that saying addresses the backsliders. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” The Holy Spirit is living in us when we come to faith. We may not listen to him, we may not live up to who we are called to be but God is faithful. Because his Holy Spirit lives in us, he will not deny himself.
The disowning that I believe is so dangerous is a disowning Christ, perhaps in some sort of ritual, before other people. Most of us shudder to even think of it. However, there are some who become hardened by sin, who could actually get to that point and trade the presence of God and the eternal for something temporary in this life. That is why unrepentant sin is dangerous. The longer we refuse to repent, the harder our hearts become against God. We could get to the point where we don’t hear the Holy Spirit warning us of the peril to our own souls and disown Christ.
Hopefully, we never get to that point. God is working through his abiding Holy Spirit to keep us close. We need to listen and obey and we will continue to grow in the love of God!
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you for paying the price for my sins and bringing me into your love. Help me to never cherish sin so that I keep my heart open to you. Amen.
Thinking About and Being a Child of God 