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 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, 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 throw the trash in the yard on the
other side of theirs and not yours, or turn down the music if you ask, even
lend you a tool on occasion.
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? They do grievous things sometimes. What if they
enslave people, take away their freedom, fight a war with my country to destroy
my beliefs.
Yes, I can, because if I can't,
they have already destroyed my beliefs.
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.
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray,
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
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.
After the Civil War had ended,
Abraham Lincoln traveled to the home of his enemy, the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis. Mrs. Davis
greeted him at the door holding her young daughter in her arms. She told
President Lincoln her husband wasn't home.
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?
Corrie Ten Boom, some time after
the Second World War when she was free from the concentration camps, where her
family and her beloved sister Betsie had perished, gave a speech and at the
reception afterward she saw a familiar man coming toward her. Here is how she
told it:
"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 recently. 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 be 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.
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 at the top
of this post is not of so innocent love as it appears. It is a statue in a
Korean Garden dedicated not to love, but to sex. 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.
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