3-17-2022

      Good Morning All!

    John 13:34; “I’m giving you a new commandment: Love each other in the same way that I have loved you”

    Many years ago, there was a pop song that had the chorus line “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey; love the one you’re with.”  This line pretty much sums up the world’s view of love. This view is based entirely on the selfish concept of “me, me, only me.”  It gives a much-distorted view of love. A common view of love is the one that states, “I’ll love you as long as you love me and are nice to me and as long as you make me feel good.”  This way of looking at love also distorted the view of God’s law and covenant.

    During the time that Jesus ministered here on earth, the Pharisees and the Scribes had completely distorted the correct way to read God’s law that was given to Moses. The Pharisees made the law very condemning and harsh. They used the law to punish and attack the people. They used it as a cruel rod of oppression. They used the law to beat the people into submission and gave them no comfort, no peace, and no hope.

    This was the way religion worked at this time. It was about rules, really picky rules, and it was about being judged or judging someone else. This was one of the reasons that Jesus’ message resonated with the common, everyday people at this time and not with the religious elite. The message of Jesus offered hope. Instead of condemning, he offered forgiveness. He told his disciples that faith, true faith is very different from what the Pharisees taught. True faith was shown with love. This is what Jesus meant when he called it a “new commandment;” it was new to the way they were used to. It was new to them but not to Jesus or God.

    This doesn’t mean that we forget the law. The law serves as a guide to our life. When we approach someone who is in sin, it is not so much telling them that they are wrong. It is telling them that what they are doing is hurtful to themselves and hurtful to their relationship with God. When Jesus told the woman who was caught in adultery to “go and sin no more;” this was as much about the harm she was doing to herself, her family, and all the others involved. The pain that she felt was pretty much self-inflicted. This is common today.

    We are often our own worst enemy. We hold onto hate or grudges; we think that fulfilling selfish desires makes us happy and it never does. The person who loves money never has enough and worries about it constantly. The person who loves himself only thinks of himself and is usually lonely most of the time. The person who expects others to make him happy rarely is because our source of happiness is not outside of us but comes from our inner peace which we have with and from God. Our only source of true joy is love; the kind of love that is the expression of our faith in Jesus.

    Father of all love, too often we fall short of your glory and on doing so we fail to love as you love us. Strengthen us with your grace and move us by your mercy to reach out and to show your love to those around us. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret