Here's a sadly funny thing:
Many Christians today want to only look at two commandments, and disregard all the others that the Word of God instructs us with, in order to remain safely non-legalistic. Thankfully, for those Christians, the two commandments of which I speak are in the New Testament, very far from the Old Testament Law of Moses, so they should be safe:
And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
There is none other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)
The reason I say this is a funny thing is because Christians think they are being proper (and more importantly non-legalistic) by just keeping these two commandments, instead of all the others in the Word of God. [By the way, those two commandments are called "the greatest", not "the only" and not "the last".]
But I say, if we can keep only these two commandments, then any other commandment in the Bible should just be a walk in the park for us!
The big problem is that we like to think we are keeping these two commandments, but I am pretty sure the first commandment is the one that "few" are keeping even though "many" are calling Jesus Lord (referring to the prior blog posting and Matthew 7:21-23.)
And if we cannot keep the first, how could we possibly keep the second?
Not possible.
The only way we can love others is by first loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength; without knowing and loving Him that intimately, we will never know what love looks like and will never be able to imitate it, will we?
And we can only return God's love (the first of the two "greatest" commandments) if "self" is dead.
That's another commandment by the way:
And He said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. (Luke 9:23-24)
You see, I think that's what the folks were doing in Matthew 7:23-24...works that didn't cost them their lives. They did works that were convenient or comfortable for them. It was still all about them, not God. It wasn't that the works were wrong, they just were works done by folks who didn't really love God more than they loved themselves.
But there are others who do the opposite: claim they know God and have no works. Works, these Christian say, show that you aren't trusting in Jesus' finished work on the cross. And we have to be careful, these Christians will say, about obeying commandments because obeying commandments (the law of God) is legalism.
Although the same folks who worry about legalism apparently think it's ok to obey the Ten Commandments, the ones their childen were raised up on...oh, but that's right, the first one of those is still the one we seem unable to keep...and thankfully the fourth one doesn't apply to us Gentile Christians - we changed it to Sunday, the first day of the week, to make sure we didn't appear to be too Jewish! [Wonder why the other nine are still considered Gentile-safe?]
It is sadly true that we Christians worry so much about becoming legalistic Pharisees following 600 some odd commandments, when, in fact, we haven't even bothered to commit enough to God to follow the first commandment! What exactly are we worrying about? Paul himself, even after he came to know Christ, said 'I am a Pharisee.' He didn't say 'I was a Pharisee but now I don't worry about commandments.' He remained faithful to the law of God for as long as he lived.
Instead of worrying about becoming legalistic, or overly Jewish, or whatever other excuse we can find to ignore God's Word...why don't we get our thoughts off of labels and just focus on obeying God like Paul did, and more importantly, like Jesus did.
In fact, that's what these several blog postings are about: getting off the wide path of SELF and getting onto the narrow path of JESUS.
Do you know JESUS?
Here's how to know if you do:
And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. (1 John 2:3)
He that sayeth, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (1 John 2:4)
But whoso keepeth His Word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in Him. (1 John 2:5)
He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself to walk, even as He walked. (1 John 2:6)
Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the Word which ye have heard from the beginning. (1 John 2:7)
JESUS IS THE WORD OF GOD.
Thus, calling Jesus "LORD, LORD" (doubling it makes it a surety in scripture) means we are declaring that we are absolutely obedient to the Word of God, including the first commandment and second of the two greater commandments that Jesus speaks of in Mark 12:29 above.
We have been called to obedience without rationalization (rationalizations=interpreting scripture in ways that allow us to remain in our comfort zone).
We only walk like Jesus when we walk in obedience to the commandments of God as declared in His Word. And since Jesus is THE WORD OF GOD (according to John chapter 1), then Jesus is in all of the Old Testament commandments as well as all of the New Testament commandments. And we cannot call Him "LORD, LORD" if we are not obeying HIM, THE WORD, completely. Or else we are false.
This is not merely an opinion.
It is the Word of God according to the beloved disciple John.
Are we prepared to call John "legalistic" in order to retain the comfort of the "once saved, always saved" doctrines that don't motivate us to endure affliction (discipline) til the end?
Are we prepared to remind John that Jesus said on the cross "It is finished" and therefore obeying commandments is contrary to the grace of God?
Are we prepared to tell John that if we strive to be obedient to commandments then we are trying to "work" for our salvation and rejecting "grace"?
John says that nothing about what he is saying is new, or a new commandment. He says that he is speaking of the commandment that has been there all along...in the Word. In fact, the commandment IS the Word, ALL of the Word, both Old Testament and New!
Keep in mind, that in John's time there was no New Testament. They had the experience of Jesus, and walking with Him, and witnessing all that transpired with Jesus: miracles, death, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost; AND they had scripture...all of the Old Testament....filled with commandments that John was referring to from the Old Testament...such as:
And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.
Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;
And then the LORD's wrath be kindled against you, and He shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.
Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates: that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.
For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, and to cleave unto Him; then will the LORD drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves.
Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.
There shall no man be able to stand before you: for the LORD your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you.
Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; a blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day:
And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day to go after other gods, which ye have not known. (Deuteronomy 11:13-28).
Now here's the deal:
We Gentiles were grafted into the olive tree called Israel (did you not hear Jesus say in Mark 12:29 - "Hear O Israel" right before He proceeded to proclaim the two greatest commandments? Who all is included in Israel if not those who trust in Jesus, both Jew and Gentile?) That tells me that not only are all the promises AND covenants applicable to me, grafted-in Israelite that I am, but also all the curses. You cannot have one without the other. And depending on how many grafted-in Israelites here in America are loving God in the way that HE has prescribed, my nation just might get saved as well.
OR God might move me out of it before He destroys it; if I have truly "loved" Him.
So what am I going to do?
I am going to BEGIN by reading the Word of God from beginning to end, over and over again. And I am going to highlight any command that is at all possible for me to be obedient to, without breaking the law of the land that I live in (which means that stoning rebellious children is out.) And I won't be sacrificing animals to atone for my sin (because Jesus DID take care of that one, once and for all, with His own sacrificed life.)
And then I am going to be obedient to those commandments that I have highlighted in my Bible. That is the minimum that I am going to do; not the most that I am going to do.
Yes, I am going to "work" at being obedient to the Lord. I am going to "love" God (be obedient to God) with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength. Jesus says that in Him I can do all things! He says His grace is sufficient for all that I need. I need HIM in order to be as obedient as He was! But He is not going to take my foot out of the boat and force me to walk on water. I have to step out in faith that openly declares (not with words, but with steps of obedience to the Word) that I trust completely in Christ to show me the path of obedience, and to keep me on it with His guidance.
And even if it makes me uncomfortable, I am not going to rationalize my way out of obedience! Instead, I am going to rely on His strength to help me through it.
I am not going to "work" as though doing so will justify me with God. Because it won't.
Only faith in Jesus justifies me with God.
But I have a lot of "love" to "show" God for all that He has done for me through His Son.
Now it's time to stop talking and start loving God.
In the next postings, we will look at some of those commandments, and we will look at some more warnings that follow for those who still choose not to love God with ALL that they are. We will look at what it really means to die to self as we walk this narrow path of loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.
ALL is a key word...it won't be a mere 10% of ourselves that we give to the Lord. It must be ALL.
Many Christians today want to only look at two commandments, and disregard all the others that the Word of God instructs us with, in order to remain safely non-legalistic. Thankfully, for those Christians, the two commandments of which I speak are in the New Testament, very far from the Old Testament Law of Moses, so they should be safe:
And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
There is none other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)
The reason I say this is a funny thing is because Christians think they are being proper (and more importantly non-legalistic) by just keeping these two commandments, instead of all the others in the Word of God. [By the way, those two commandments are called "the greatest", not "the only" and not "the last".]
But I say, if we can keep only these two commandments, then any other commandment in the Bible should just be a walk in the park for us!
The big problem is that we like to think we are keeping these two commandments, but I am pretty sure the first commandment is the one that "few" are keeping even though "many" are calling Jesus Lord (referring to the prior blog posting and Matthew 7:21-23.)
And if we cannot keep the first, how could we possibly keep the second?
Not possible.
The only way we can love others is by first loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength; without knowing and loving Him that intimately, we will never know what love looks like and will never be able to imitate it, will we?
And we can only return God's love (the first of the two "greatest" commandments) if "self" is dead.
That's another commandment by the way:
And He said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. (Luke 9:23-24)
You see, I think that's what the folks were doing in Matthew 7:23-24...works that didn't cost them their lives. They did works that were convenient or comfortable for them. It was still all about them, not God. It wasn't that the works were wrong, they just were works done by folks who didn't really love God more than they loved themselves.
But there are others who do the opposite: claim they know God and have no works. Works, these Christian say, show that you aren't trusting in Jesus' finished work on the cross. And we have to be careful, these Christians will say, about obeying commandments because obeying commandments (the law of God) is legalism.
Although the same folks who worry about legalism apparently think it's ok to obey the Ten Commandments, the ones their childen were raised up on...oh, but that's right, the first one of those is still the one we seem unable to keep...and thankfully the fourth one doesn't apply to us Gentile Christians - we changed it to Sunday, the first day of the week, to make sure we didn't appear to be too Jewish! [Wonder why the other nine are still considered Gentile-safe?]
It is sadly true that we Christians worry so much about becoming legalistic Pharisees following 600 some odd commandments, when, in fact, we haven't even bothered to commit enough to God to follow the first commandment! What exactly are we worrying about? Paul himself, even after he came to know Christ, said 'I am a Pharisee.' He didn't say 'I was a Pharisee but now I don't worry about commandments.' He remained faithful to the law of God for as long as he lived.
Instead of worrying about becoming legalistic, or overly Jewish, or whatever other excuse we can find to ignore God's Word...why don't we get our thoughts off of labels and just focus on obeying God like Paul did, and more importantly, like Jesus did.
In fact, that's what these several blog postings are about: getting off the wide path of SELF and getting onto the narrow path of JESUS.
Do you know JESUS?
Here's how to know if you do:
And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. (1 John 2:3)
He that sayeth, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (1 John 2:4)
But whoso keepeth His Word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in Him. (1 John 2:5)
He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself to walk, even as He walked. (1 John 2:6)
Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the Word which ye have heard from the beginning. (1 John 2:7)
JESUS IS THE WORD OF GOD.
Thus, calling Jesus "LORD, LORD" (doubling it makes it a surety in scripture) means we are declaring that we are absolutely obedient to the Word of God, including the first commandment and second of the two greater commandments that Jesus speaks of in Mark 12:29 above.
We have been called to obedience without rationalization (rationalizations=interpreting scripture in ways that allow us to remain in our comfort zone).
We only walk like Jesus when we walk in obedience to the commandments of God as declared in His Word. And since Jesus is THE WORD OF GOD (according to John chapter 1), then Jesus is in all of the Old Testament commandments as well as all of the New Testament commandments. And we cannot call Him "LORD, LORD" if we are not obeying HIM, THE WORD, completely. Or else we are false.
This is not merely an opinion.
It is the Word of God according to the beloved disciple John.
Are we prepared to call John "legalistic" in order to retain the comfort of the "once saved, always saved" doctrines that don't motivate us to endure affliction (discipline) til the end?
Are we prepared to remind John that Jesus said on the cross "It is finished" and therefore obeying commandments is contrary to the grace of God?
Are we prepared to tell John that if we strive to be obedient to commandments then we are trying to "work" for our salvation and rejecting "grace"?
John says that nothing about what he is saying is new, or a new commandment. He says that he is speaking of the commandment that has been there all along...in the Word. In fact, the commandment IS the Word, ALL of the Word, both Old Testament and New!
Keep in mind, that in John's time there was no New Testament. They had the experience of Jesus, and walking with Him, and witnessing all that transpired with Jesus: miracles, death, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost; AND they had scripture...all of the Old Testament....filled with commandments that John was referring to from the Old Testament...such as:
And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.
Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;
And then the LORD's wrath be kindled against you, and He shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.
Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates: that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.
For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, and to cleave unto Him; then will the LORD drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves.
Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.
There shall no man be able to stand before you: for the LORD your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you.
Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; a blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day:
And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day to go after other gods, which ye have not known. (Deuteronomy 11:13-28).
Now here's the deal:
We Gentiles were grafted into the olive tree called Israel (did you not hear Jesus say in Mark 12:29 - "Hear O Israel" right before He proceeded to proclaim the two greatest commandments? Who all is included in Israel if not those who trust in Jesus, both Jew and Gentile?) That tells me that not only are all the promises AND covenants applicable to me, grafted-in Israelite that I am, but also all the curses. You cannot have one without the other. And depending on how many grafted-in Israelites here in America are loving God in the way that HE has prescribed, my nation just might get saved as well.
OR God might move me out of it before He destroys it; if I have truly "loved" Him.
So what am I going to do?
I am going to BEGIN by reading the Word of God from beginning to end, over and over again. And I am going to highlight any command that is at all possible for me to be obedient to, without breaking the law of the land that I live in (which means that stoning rebellious children is out.) And I won't be sacrificing animals to atone for my sin (because Jesus DID take care of that one, once and for all, with His own sacrificed life.)
And then I am going to be obedient to those commandments that I have highlighted in my Bible. That is the minimum that I am going to do; not the most that I am going to do.
Yes, I am going to "work" at being obedient to the Lord. I am going to "love" God (be obedient to God) with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength. Jesus says that in Him I can do all things! He says His grace is sufficient for all that I need. I need HIM in order to be as obedient as He was! But He is not going to take my foot out of the boat and force me to walk on water. I have to step out in faith that openly declares (not with words, but with steps of obedience to the Word) that I trust completely in Christ to show me the path of obedience, and to keep me on it with His guidance.
And even if it makes me uncomfortable, I am not going to rationalize my way out of obedience! Instead, I am going to rely on His strength to help me through it.
I am not going to "work" as though doing so will justify me with God. Because it won't.
Only faith in Jesus justifies me with God.
But I have a lot of "love" to "show" God for all that He has done for me through His Son.
Now it's time to stop talking and start loving God.
In the next postings, we will look at some of those commandments, and we will look at some more warnings that follow for those who still choose not to love God with ALL that they are. We will look at what it really means to die to self as we walk this narrow path of loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.
ALL is a key word...it won't be a mere 10% of ourselves that we give to the Lord. It must be ALL.
2 comments:
Amen JR
Thanks for reading, JR...and for your prayers!
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