Fresh Start: Love your Neighbor
The whole purpose of this series is to find out what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus. “We want to be people who are with him, to become like him, to do what he did” – John Mark Comer.
Romans 12:1-2, tells us…
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
This passage reminds us to walk with Jesus is to be transformed by him. And this is not just an invitation to us, but the mission of heaven through us. Jesus told us in Matthew 28, “Go and make disciples of all nations”. That is what we are going to lean into this week.
Our world is a broken world that is in desperate need of Jesus. What God beautifully designed has been smashed, and we are in that complexity and pain, as we try to navigate this world. The easy part is identifying that we’re broken, the hard work is to see things restored. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life in Chapter 22 takes us into the complexity of division that can happen in broken things, with an exchange between Jesus and religious leaders.
“ And these leaders were out to trap Jesus, they didn’t like that people where following him, they didn’t like that he was doing things they didn’t understand…”
The leaders saw Jesus spending time with people they felt he shouldn’t and so they were peppering him with question, looking for a soft spots in his answers, so they could expose him for the fraud that they believed that he was.
And one of these questions was in verses 36- 39:
“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.’
This notion that Jesus taught to love your neighbor is complex in our culture. Our culture has become hyper offended, and that spirit of offence fuels the division between us. We are divided in just about every way, politically, socially, economically, ethnically. This makes the idea of loving our neighbors hard. The idea of being there for those that are different than us is foreign. Left to our own devices we are drawn to things that are similar and pulled away from things that are different.
We also don’t like feeling like a misfit. So to protect ourselves, we love those who love what we love.
In Genesis 1:26-27 says…
“The God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
In the early 1800s there was a theologian named AA Hodge who unpacked Gensis 1 and concluded that when we were made in The Image of God, that, that can be broken into 2 aspects, there is the Constitutional and the Moral and Spiritual.
Constitutational
The beauty, creativity, and glory of God in you displayed in the way he made you unique
Moral and Spiritual
God’s rightenousness, goodness, and Godliness which was lost as sin entered the world, but was restored at salvation. We receive this when we accept Jesus as our Lord. We are transformed into his likeness.
2 Corinthians 3:18 says…
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate (or reflect) the Lord's glory, (constitutional Image of God) are being transformed into his image (moral or spiritual Image of God) with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
When Jesus says in Matthew 22, to love our neighbor he is reminding us that there is the constitutional image of God in all of us. And when sin entered the world, it created a separation of God in humanity and within humanity as well. Because if there is an image of God in us, the enemy wants to divide us.
The tribalism that we see in culture is a humanity long issue, and a reality that exists because of sin. As followers of Jesus, we have to live differently.
Galatians 3:26-28
“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
As a disciple of Jesus, we are called to see the likeness we have in Christ. Jesus calls us to step across what we might not understand when he said in Matthew 5:43-48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 4And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
How do we live this out:
· We pray for those who are different than us
· We choose to see God in them and find compassion for them
· We invite them to our table
· We show interest in who they are and learning what they believe
When we ask people about who they are, and what they think about life, and what they are passionate about, what they are hoping for. This opens the door for conversations about what we believe. There is power in the mundane act of sitting together at a table and leading with a posture of authentic openness and acceptance. When we are willing to do this, we are allowing the Spirit of God to move in us and through us, and that’s when connection happens.
The table is an innovation to know and to be known, and to forgive and to be forgiven. It is a place to demonstrate and share about the love and grace of God.
The last words of Jesus to his disciples and to us in Mark 16:15 was:
“Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation”.
As we go about our days and lives, my prayer is that we can look for opportunites to believe God, ask for his wisdom, and open our eyes to the people he is asking us to invite to our tables.