The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy…Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.'” (Leviticus 19:1-2, 18, NIV).
Being a Christian Disciple starts with illumination from the Holy Spirit that The Father loves you, that Christ came to redeem you, and that the Spirit has opened your eyes to the reality of sin, the need for forgiveness, a conviction and trust that that forgiveness is yours through faith in Christ, and a love and attraction to God that sees Him as worthy of love. That divine illumination leads to incarnation, in fact I would go so far as to say it assumes it. God’s love to us in Christ always leads to love for God, and that love for God always leads to incarnation.
God’s love naturally leads to the incarnation of His love.
We see this first in the Father’s own love for us. He was not content to simply tell us about His love, nor was He content to show it from afar, but He sent His Son to us, incarnating Him as one of us, so that God could look at us one Person to another and tell us that He loved us, face to face, so that He could show us that He loved us with His own hands and feet. The Father’s love is incarnated in Jesus. He wanted us to know that His love was no passing fad, or light hearted commitment, but He wanted us to know that it was an all-out, no-holds-barred, gracious, one-way love that would even go to the cross for us. No matter how badly we might treat Him, no matter how we might fail, He would love us anyway, because His Son settled all the debts we had with the Father’s righteousness.
Jesus was the incarnation of the Father’s love. But He never intended to be the last incarnation of the Father’s love. Jesus gave us His Spirit so we could incarnate the love of the Father and Son to others.
We incarnate that love in how we conduct ourselves. How we are to conduct ourselves is outlined in all the do’s and don’t’s in the Bible. All the do’s and don’t’s are meant primarily for you to do.
When we hear do’s and don’t’s like…
- Respect your parents (Leviticus 19:3).
- Observe the Sabbath (Leviticus 19:3).
- Don’t make idols (Leviticus 19:4).
- Don’t steal (Leviticus 19:11).
- Don’t slander (Leviticus 19:16).
- Don’t seek revenge or bear a grudge (Leviticus 19:18).
…we have a tendency to simply agree that they are good and wish everyone else would follow them. Now it is true there is a time and place for calling people on the carpet and it is true that we need trusted truth-tellers to help hold us accountable for how we act. But the focus of these commands is not on the other, but on me. We need to think primarily of ourselves when we hear these laws. If we don’t, we have missed the point. My primary concern and where I should be spending the bulk of my time, effort, and energy is on myself doing these things, not on making sure others are doing these things.
I love this quote from Maximos the Confessor, one of the Early Church Fathers,
He who busies himself with the sins of others, or judges his brother on suspicion, has not yet even begun to repent or to examine himself so as to discover his own sins…Maximos the Confessor, On Love, no. 55 (3rd Century).
God says “be holy as I am holy,” not “make sure others are holy as I am holy.”
The second way we incarnate that love is in how we relate to and respond to others. When we are sinned against we are to show grace and forgiveness (Colossians 3:13). When we see someone who has fallen down and is hurting we are to show them mercy and compassion (Luke 10:30-37). When we are mistreated we are to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39). When we are called to judge we are to be just not showing partiality or favoritism (Leviticus 19:15).
Together these show a life of love. When we love each other in this way, we are being holy as God is holy, we are incarnating God’s love to one another.
In my next post I will wrap up this up. Hope to see you back then. =)
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 