The Beatles once sang, "All you need is love, love; Love is all you need."
If all you ever need is love, then why does the couple in the photograph have gifts behind their back to gave each other?
We Christians speak a lot about love. We say we love God. We say we love Jesus. We say we love each other. We say we love everybody. Is love really all that important?
" ‘...love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.' " Leviticus 19:18b
Jesus replied, " 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.' " Matthew 19:18b-19
" 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:30-31
He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' "
"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." Luke 10:27-28
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13:8-10
Apparently then, love is very important for the Christian to have. That is easy to say, but is it easy to do? I love my neighbors. But I have very nice neighbors who will help you if you need help and who are always friendly, and if they are going to do something they think may offend you, like put up a fence, they come and ask if it is okay with you.
Maybe it isn't so easy loving a neighbor who plays loud music all night or throws trash in your yard. Of course, it may be beneficial to show some love to your neighbor, even those bad ones. After all, maybe if you do, they’ll turn down the music if you ask, even lend you a tool on occasion and throw the trash in the yard on the other side of theirs and not yours (yeah, that’d be a real Christian solution, wouldn’t it?)
But we're not suppose to love someone for what we can get out of it, are we? We're not to approach each other with those little bribes (and secret motives) hidden behind our backs.
Neighbors are one thing, we have to live with them, but love our enemies? That becomes a little harder. Do I have to really love my enemies?
Proverbs 25:21-22. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.
But maybe my enemy isn’t hungry, maybe he is just blood thirsty. They do grievous things sometimes. What if they enslave people, take away their freedom, fight a war with my country to destroy my beliefs.
Can I still find love for them?
Yes, I can, because if I can't, they have already destroyed my beliefs
God has placed it upon the government to wage just wars against evil.
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Romans 13:3-4.
So for the most part we as individuals should heed Romans 12:14-21, no matter how difficult and counter-intuitive it may seem:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:14-21.
It doesn't mean I don't fight the wars against injustice. It doesn't mean I don't condemn bad behavior. It doesn't mean I allow slavery. When we rail against those things, we do it out of love. When a child misbehaves, we punish that child out of love in order to stop the child from continuing their wrong desires and ruining their lives, not to inflict pain for pain's sake. And when the punishment is doled out, when the bad deeds end, when the wars are over, there is something else we do out of love, and we can never ever truly love ourselves if we don’t. That is forgiveness.
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'.
“"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address 1865.
Lincoln practiced what h preached. After the Civil War had
The little girl was reaching out, trying to clutch him. President Lincoln took the girl from her mother and held her to his breast and she kissed him on the face. When he handed the girl back to her mother before leaving, he said, "Ma'am, tell your husband for the sake of that kiss, I forgive him for all."
There was a song by Meat Loaf called: "I'll do Anything for Love, But I Won't Do That."
We cannot love our neighbor. We cannot love our enemy. We cannot even love ourselves unless we do something, which too often we say "but I won't do that". Yet we are commanded to do it by God and Christ, and we can with the help of the Holy Spirit. This brings us back to the full verse of Leviticus 19:18.
" 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.' "
Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:12-15
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment! James 2:8-13
We can never love, ourselves or anyone else, if we have never forgiven those who have hurt or wronged us. Do you really think there is someone in your life you cannot forgive?
"Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; the place was the Ravensbruck concentration camp and the man who was making his way forward had been a guard – one of the most cruel guards.
“Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: 'A fine message Fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!'
“And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course – how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
“But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
“'You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,' he was saying. 'I was a guard there.' No, he did not remember me.
“'But since that time,' he went on, 'I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well, Fraulein, ' - again the hand came out - 'will you forgive me?'
“And I stood there – I whose sins had every day to be forgiven – and could not. Betsie had died in that place – could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
“It could not have been many seconds that he stood there – hand held out – but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
“For I had to do it – I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. 'If ye do not forgive men their trespasses,' Jesus says, 'neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses.'
“I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.
“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion – I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. 'Jesus help me!' I prayed silently. 'I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.'
“And so, woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes
“'I forgive you, brother', I cried. 'With all my heart! '
“For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely, as I did then.
“But even so, I realized it was not my love. I had tried, and did not have the power. It was the power of the Holy Spirit as recorded in Romans 5:5 '...because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.'” by Corrie Ten Boom
I do not hate anyone. And I can say I have forgiven everyone I ever perceived had done me harm, to the point I cannot remember most of those hurts. There is one I remember because it was the hardest for me to forgive and my forgiving only happened in recent years. That was the Doctor who refused to come when my wife, alone and fearful, lost our first baby. This was the Doctor who came too late, when the silence corpse of that child lay curled within a pan, and said when asked what to do with it, "you can throw it in the garbage for all I care."
How did I forgive this? Because I do not know what was in that man's mind when he said that. What was he thinking? What terrible thing was in his heart? What burdens did he carry in his own life? There must existed some deep hurt inside to enable such cruelty, especially from a Doctor pledged to do no harm. How can he be healed without forgiveness, and how could I have been healed from picking at the wound from that lash, so as to make it bleed over and over, and wound me over and over, if I wouldn't forgive him. If he is dead or alive, I pray he found true forgiveness from Our Lord and escaped Hell. (He is deceased, having died this past decade.)
You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. Galatians 5:13-15
When I write, I pray the Lord will guide me. But I am not Paul or any of the Gospel writers. I may quote God's words, but I am not writing as the voice of God. I believe what I write, but am not safe from imperfection and making an error of interpretation. I pay attention to what others say and review my thoughts against theirs and then test their thoughts and my own against Scripture. If I make a mistake, I ask your forgiveness. If I disagree with you in some matters, I ask it as well.
Sometimes when I read comments I see disagreement. Please do not allow disagreements to become bickering. We live in an evil world and we need each other to stand against Satan. If we disagree on some matter, and we have tried to resolve it and can't, we need to forgive each other and agree to disagree, unless the error is such it threatens the core of our beliefs and could bring harm to our brother. But still forgive and reach out and leave the judgment to God.
Even if we come under the most erroneous attacks as Christians, we must still forgive and pray for the attacker. Always remember:
When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One." Luke 23:33-35
The Illustration of the kissing couple I used for this section is not of such innocent love as it appears. It is a statue in a Korean Garden dedicated not to love, but to lust. We cannot have true love if our innocent front hides dark secrets and wishes for revenge against anyone. We are called to love and called to forgive.
It is one of the things the Lord taught us to pray.
and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matthew 6:12)
That is from the Lord’s Prayer, of course. If you were Catholic you probably know the prayer well. At one time, even if you were a church skipping Atheist you probably knew it well, too. We use to say it every morning in the opening exercises at school, public school, no less.
But what is the line just before the “and”? And what do you think of it when compared to John 10:9-10?
We’ll open that door some time and talk a bit about the realities of our lives.
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