This Week : 24 February 2019 – Whole-hearted
This Week : 24 February 2019 – Whole-hearted

This Week : 24 February 2019 – Whole-hearted

Bible Reading: Luke 6:27-38

Dear Friends

Like Moses, Jesus comes down from the mountain to speak to the gathered people on the plain below and to declare to them the Covenant agreement between God
and his people. Our passage for study focuses on the command to love our enemies, and in so doing exposes our need for a righteousness that is given as a gift of grace
rather than a righteousness that is earned by obedience.

In our passage for this week Luke 6: 27-38, Jesus encourages us to be loving, not just loving toward people we like, but loving toward people we don’t like, even
people who have hurt us. Jesus’ focus is probably on the Christian fellowship, he is talking about relationships within the church, but his words extend beyond the
Christian fellowship to our extended family, neighbours, work-mates and the like.

Of course, “love” is a bit of an airy-fairy word and so maybe we would do better using the word “compassion”. Even so, the final two verses in our passage give us the nuts and bolts of love. Love involves not judging people, not condemning people, but rather being forgiving and generous. So, in these words Jesus has given us an ethical guide to the Christian life, but, he has also done something else. Earle Ellis in his commentary on Luke states: “the effect of Christian love in a person is in exact proportion to their
practice of it.” That is, the measure in which a believer receives God’s grace is in direct proportion to their practice of graciousness toward others. Inevitably, the demand for
such love serves to undermine any notion of selfrighteousness.


Who is there that can be “merciful, just as our Father is merciful”? If the “measure we use” is the measure we get, then we are in trouble when we have to
face up to the day of judgment. We are in dire need of receiving a gracious mercy from God that transcends our constant failure. In these exhortations from Jesus’ Great Sermon we can again observe the two functions of the law, namely, to lead
us to Christ and to give direction in our Christian life. The law serves to remind us of our own unworthiness. In reality, we can’t love as Christ demands. If gaining God’s forgiveness depends on our ability to forgive others, then we are in trouble. With our sin before us we are reminded that our standing before God is not dependent on our own limited obedience, but on Christ’s perfect obedience. The best we can do is seek out Jesus and find mercy in the one whose capacity to forgive is unbounded.

The law also serves to give direction in our Christian life, a direction motivated and shaped by the indwelling compelling of the Spirit of Christ. The law reminds us to “be
what we are.” So, Jesus’ exhortation to “unreasonable compassion”, or more particularly forgiveness, sets before us a quality of discipleship well beyond the norm. Although
we can never reach such an ideal, in the power of the indwelling Christ, we can certainly press toward it.

Solomzi

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