Yesterday I asked you to define love.  One common way people today define love is to be as tolerant and permissive as possible, as long as the other person does not to hurt others.

See what a low standard that is?  Jesus defines love to a much higher degree, he says to love one another as oneself.  He knows we are self-centered…and Jesus uses that to teach us love for others.

Between loving God with everything, and loving neighbours as ourselves, Jesus has declared self-salvation to be impossible.  We may love God to one degree or another.  But with everything?  We can and should try, but we reach our limits since we are only human, and separated ourselves from God in sin.   We need help.

Equally true, we may make ourselves harmless and never say a word to anyone who isn’t harming another, but we can’t make ourselves completely  love others as ourselves – we always want more for ourselves than to be tolerated and put up with.  We can and should try to love others as ourselves, but we need the help of another to do this.

Jesus made himself harmless, and willingly sacrificed himself on a cross in the ultimate action of love for God and others.  He led the way, and did what would be impossible for humans, so we could follow him in love for God and love for others, rather than trying to trailblaze ourselves.

We’ll look at this more in this upcoming series on neighbours.

Challenge: How do your actions “hang’ under love of God or love of neighbour?  Is there anything you’ve done in the last week that doesn’t fit one of those loves?

Ryan Sim - January 1, 2014

Wednesday - Change It - The Night That Changed the Wise

Happy New Year! We’ve been looking at the story of the Magi or wise men visiting Jesus, now we’ll contast them with the priests and scribes who were present at their meeting with Herod (see yesterday’s Bible reading). The scribes and priests are also knowledgeable, learned like the Magi. They are called to advise Herod on this apparent threat to his rule – is a new king of the Jews, or the Messiah, really going to be born? These experts on the scriptures end up helping him with his plan to have the wise men quietly scout things out for Herod, so he can swoop in and violently remove the threat. But first, Herod needed to know where in Judea this “king” would be born. This was a question the priests/scribes could answer immediately – they knew the scriptures, the history and answer that it’s Bethlehem, the city of David. The priests and scribes had all the information to know the messiah was coming, and coming imminently. But they did nothing but advise his enemy. Perhaps in their view, the arrival of the Messiah represents a threat to their power and authority in their culture, and to peace with the Romans. So they go home...Herod will neutralize threat. They advise and move on. Question: What intellectual risks are involved in following Jesus? How do you calculate those? Reminder: We are reading the Bible in sync as one community - so check out today's reading at https://www.redeemthecommute.com/readingplan Reminder: The best way to grow spiritually this year is to join our Christianity 101 in the Cafe Course in Pickering starting January 22nd. Register for you and a friend today at https://www.redeemthecommute.com/events/!

From Series: The Night that Changed Everything | More Messages from Ryan Sim | Download Audio

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