Love Your Neighbor
Posted in Community 1 CommentLove Your Neighbor, Pt. 1
What if you found out that a member of your family is moving into your neighborhood? How will you respond? First thing I do would be to figure out how I can help. Can I bring them dinners or help in any other way? They are my family! What if that particular family member is difficult to be around I would look past things like that because they we are family? There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for family. This type of commitment to family was even more intense in the first century when Jesus was alive. And yet even in that context Jesus says something very radical about family relationships. “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand toward his followers he said, here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50).
This was a shocking statement during Jesus’ time and it still is today. For centuries generations of families lived together and shared everything. But Jesus redefines the identity of family and says we need to be committed to people in our life who love God in the same way we are committed to our biological family. This statement about the identity of those people in our lives who love the Lord challenges our thinking. No matter what the differences are (e.g., age, race, or life stage) Jesus says our relationship with those who love the Lord is unique. So unique that we would be willing to give or do anything for them because they are our family. Do you know the family, as Jesus defines them, in your neighborhood?
Love Your Neighbor, Pt. 2
In my last post I talked about how Jesus redefined family to be those people in our lives who “do the will of God.” (Matthew 12:50). I think the natural question for must of us is what about those relationships with people in our lives that don’t know God? Aren’t we supposed to love them? The answer is yes. But according to Jesus one of the best ways we can love those outside the church is by loving those who are a part of the church. Here is Jesus praying to the father toward the end of his earthly ministry, “I ask also for those who will believe in me (Jesus) through their (disciples) word, that they may one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:20-22). So our love for each other in the church has everything to do with those who do not know God. When we love each other as a family Jesus says it will show those who don’t know God who God is. One of the primary ways we introduce people to God is through our love for our real family as Jesus defines it, “those who do the will of God.” (Matthew 12:50). It’s also very clear that God wants us in relationships with those outside the church because it’s in the context of relationships where they are able to see God through our lives (I Cor. 5:9-10). So as we seek to love our neighbors we build relationships and love those outside the church and balance that with a commitment of loving
those inside the church as family. And as we sacrificially love those
who Jesus says are our family those outside the church will come
to know God.
by Pastor Matt Swaney
