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?
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My wife and I sometimes reminisce about our university days, a time in our life we both had closeknit groups of friends, all living close to one another, all dedicated to some common academic pursuits.
With so much more going on in our lives now, and living in so many places, we’ve maintained those friendships but not with the intensity of those early years.
Those are some of the same characteristics of the early Christians we’ve been studying this week, who spent time living in close proximity, united, but for a very different purpose: praying to begin their work of expanding the kingdom of God.
These were the early days, with the intensity and fervour that people are still talking about, and trying to replicate today.
Every church community today is meant to be patterned after this one, and that’s why we’ll explore this in detail over the next few months.
Not to say every aspect is to be copied…some things were simply cultural, or circumstantial. We have to differentiate those from the eternal aspects.
I think the first thing for us to consider is their dedication to prayer.
I know this is always a challenge for me – to be dedicated, and fervent in prayer like these first Christians were.
Yet I know that prayer always precedes any great move of God.
As we prepare for our community to take some big steps this fall, and start to meet together as this biblical community did, our small groups and individuals need to pay attention to prayer.
Challenge: Pray with your group for this upcoming series. Pray that God will unite you through common experiences, and send you out in mission to include others and help them follow Jesus too.
See you tomorrow, when we’ll spend some more time in prayer. See you then.
