My dear friends:
In view of a number of
recent happenings I am reminded of a scripture I make a point of
looking at often, it is 1 Corinthians 13 1-3:
If
I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am
a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers,
and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all
faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If
I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but
have not love, I gain nothing.
What
this reminds me is that no what I may do, or how much, or how
powerful my works, presentation, or whatever, if I do it out of any
other motive than love, then my works and actions are worthless, of
no account. God hold us to no less a standard than this, we are to
follow the Royal Law of Love (James 2:8). So what does that mean for
us as Christians? Let's look at the topic some.
Christians
are not under the Law of Moses, let's get that out of the way before
we go any further. James, in the verse I cited pointed out that love
is the Law's fulfillment, we are called to fulfill the law, not
follow it. To that end Jesus left us to “commands,” taken from
the law, but applied in a new way. We find that when Jesus was asked
what the most important law was. His reply was:
But
when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they
gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to
test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"
And he said to him, "You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind. This
is the great and first commandment.
And a second is like it: You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments depend
all the Law and the Prophets."
(Mat
22:34-40)
The
first is from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and is just that, the
first and most important law for us to follow. The second is found
in Leviticus 19:18, which shows both the breadth and depth of Jesus
knowledge and understating of the law, that he could take two laws
from different books of the law and rate them so well. Jesus would
add another “command,” or Law of Love, so named because all of
them require love instead of obedience, but that one isn't really
relevant to this post.
I'm
going to take the second one first here for reasons which will be
seen later. So, what does it mean to love our neighbors I've
already blogged on the subject of love in the Bible here
(http://stanley-loper.blogspot.com/2011/10/love.html),
it might be a good idea for you to take a moment and read through
that post. However, the word Paul and Jesus used was αγαπη
and it's verb form αγαπαω,
which in short, is pure and unselfish love
which asks nothing back from the one loved.
That
kind of love tries to avoid real harm to ones neighbor. So one who
loves their neighbor in that way won't steal or cheat from them,
won't hold them up for ridicule, will always be ready to help them if
they need it and won't retaliate against neighbors who hate or harm
them beyond minimal self defense if there is no other choice. They
will go so far as to take an insulting slap, as Jesus told us to.
They will provide a good example of what it means to be a true
follower of Christ for their neighbor to see and show them the way.
Sadly,
the belief has arisen in this culture is that it is wrong to “hurt”
others feelings by refusing to endorse a lifestyle a Christian sees
as headed down the “wrong path,” one of the meanings inherent in
the Hebrew word for “unrighteous.” Think about it, real love
instead requires one to tactfully point out a wrong course of another
instead of refraining from any sort of criticism, or condoning a
harmful course. We all point pout the dangers of smoking to friends
we love, don't we?
Which
also leads us now to the “first command.” We are to love God
with all our heart and being, as Jesus stated above. That means we
are to put him first in our lives and live them in such a way as to
please him. I won't get into everything that means, that's because
doing so requires an accurate knowledge of the God who has been
misrepresented by a church system which departed from God's truth to
meet the requirements of a state religion. But the fact is that God
requires something of those who would follow him through his son,
Jesus Christ. That is that they live their lives a certain way.
That way is laid out for us at Acts the fifteenth chapter:
“For
it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no
greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from
meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled,
and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do
well. Fare ye well.” (Act
15:28-29)
So
Christians are abjured from eating certain things, and from
fornication, the point which is filling so many columns and blogs
these days. The Greek word for fornication is πορνεια
and covers a wide range of activities,
including homosexual activities. Now, note, this is what called
Christians do, they are to “abstain” from these things, not force
others to. A stronger form of the same Greek verb “abstain” is
found at 1 Thessalonians 5:22 and can be translated in that instance
as “Avoid every appearance of evil.” Many Christians take this
to mean that they are to avoid any activity which can be seen as
endorsing a course of sin. Jehovah's Witnesses, for instance, have
refused blood transfusions based on their understanding of these
passages since the end of WWII. Many others try to avoid meat
product which use blood in their diet, we are among those. To this
day there are innkeepers who will refuse a room to couples they
believe aren't married. And others have concluded they cannot serve
celebrations of gay marriage, a form of πορνεια.
That, they conclude, is a part of showing
their love for both God and neighbor by avoiding “every appearance
of evil.”
I
can go into detail about the way fornication harms people, with
unstable relationships, unwanted pregnancy and children, and a much
higher rate of sexually transmitted diseases, some deadly, and here
in America one in particularly still raging through the male
homosexual community at a much higher rate than the rest of the
population. Love for you, my neighbor moves me to point those things
out. And love for God means we will never, ever accept the pursuit
of πορνεια as
something right, much less equivalent to following the Bible's
commands, as we have all of our life as we understood them.
It
is our firm belief that even for those not called to the Christian
hope and race, following the plainly laid out moral course in the New
Testament is the best course for anyone who wants to avoid some of
the heartbreak in this world. And we appeal to anyone reading who
isn't already in the race to look at the Gospel, the essential
doctrine of the Christ and seek to join it. And if not, to consider
the Bible's wisdom, which can help one live a life free from many of
the worries of this world.
Thank
you.
