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Love Your Neighbor (King’s Cross)

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INTRODUCTION

Leviticus 19 is sometimes called the Sermon on the Mount of the Old Testament, since like the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, it is a collection of moral instructions for God’s people, including the specific command that is the second greatest commandment: “love your neighbor as yourself.” Repeated twice in this chapter, we should understand the whole chapter (and Jesus says the whole Old Testament) as a lesson on that point.

THE TEXT

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy…”

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Since piety begins at home, God’s people are to fear their mother and their father, keep God’s sabbaths, and not turn to idols (19:1-4). When they offer peace offerings, they may only eat the feast for two days, preventing overindulgence, laziness, and greed – probably implying the need to share and be generous (19:5-8). Related, God requires business owners to leave leftovers for the poor (19:9-10). God’s people must not steal, lie, swear falsely, or rob anyone, even by being slow to pay what we owe, particularly to the poor (19:11-13). All cruelty, especially to the disabled, is condemned, as well as all injustice through favoritism or partiality (19:14-15). All gossip and slander are prohibited as forms of murder and hatred, and if you have a problem with someone, you must talk to them directly (19:16-17). God’s people are to reject all vengeance and grudges, and love their neighbors as themselves (19:18).

While mixing seeds and fabrics may have been prohibited as a sign of distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, this law also points to God’s insistence that His people not confuse and mix the “fabric” of the way God made the world, e.g. male and female (19:19). While justice is to be without partiality, God insists that those with less power (e.g. slaves) be granted greater benefit of the doubt, particularly in cases of sexual immorality (19:20-22). The people were required to trust God for the fruit of their newly planted trees, waiting until the fifth year to eat it (19:23-25). All idolatry is prohibited: whether through consuming blood, pagan hairstyles, tattoos, prostitution, or witchcraft (19:26-31). The chapter returns to where it began, reminding the people to keep sabbath, rise up before the elderly, love strangers as themselves, and keep justice, since God is the Lord and brought them out of Egypt (Lev. 19:32-37).

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF

Jesus and the New Testament writers repeatedly insist that the whole law is found in this summary: love your neighbor as yourself (Lk. 10:27-28, Gal. 5:14, Js. 2:8). This is the law and the prophets, and all the laws are summarized and fulfilled in this one: love your neighbor as yourself (Mt. 22:39-40, Rom. 13:9-10). Love is more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mk. 12:29-33). This completely contradicts those who claim that the law of God is opposed to love, or that the Old Testament was not about the love of God. Love is obedience to God from the heart. But to truly understand the law of God is to see how far short we fall of God’s love.

This love requires strict justice and fairness in some matters (19:11-13, 15, 35-36), but also loves mercy and generosity (19:9-10, 20-22). Even manners are love in the little things: clothing, hair, standing for the elderly (19:19, 27, 32). Love works hard, honestly, avoiding the need to receive charity, with the goal of being able to give generously to those in need (Lev. 19:5-6, 9-10, 34, cf. 2 Thess. 3:5ff, Eph. 4:28). While civil magistrates have a duty to love God by enforcing strict justice, they have no business coercing the “love” or charity of others. Government programs and the taxation they require only robs people of the opportunity to love freely.

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?

When the lawyer asked Jesus who his neighbor was that he was to love, Jesus famously answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:29-37). The striking thing is that Jesus shifts the question from “Who is my neighbor?” (object) to “Who acted as a neighbor?” (subject) (Lk. 10: 29, 36). The point is that we are required to have a certain disposition, ready to love. Notice that the so-called rule-followers (the Levite and Priest) are the ones who fail to be neighbors, and the one notorious for breaking rules (the Samaritan) is the one who loves the nearly-dead Jew. The Samaritan is incredibly lavish, and Jesus emphasizes this: bandages, oil, wine, transportation, lodging, further care, future care, and all expenses paid (Lk. 10:34-35).

Most interpreters take the Samaritan to be a type of Jesus, an outcast, come to rescue the nearly-dead human race in Adam, which certainly works. It may also be the case that Jesus intends to be prefigured in the stripped, beaten, and robbed man among the thieves, setting the goal of neighbor-love as ultimately aimed at loving Him, through the least of these my brethren (Mt. 25:40). In either case, the conclusion is that in order to love your neighbor as yourself, you must reckon yourself an outsider, a foreigner, a threat, a criminal, already rejected, having nothing to lose (Gal. 2:20). In other words, love means reckoning yourself as among the rescued, as among the slaves because you were freed from Egypt (Lev. 19:34, 36).

CONCLUSIONS

As we consider our duty to love, we should remember the difference between refugees and apostles from the world. Refugees are fleeing from the world and frequently show up looking like the world, talking like the world, and full of the confusions of the world but they are teachable and hungry to learn. Apostles show up with a message from the world about how backward and narrow-minded Biblical thinking and living is. Refugees are welcome to come and learn and grow; apostles should be corrected a couple times and then not given the time of day (Tit. 3:10).

Throughout the text, the line is repeated: “I am the Lord,” and it seems that this should be taken as shorthand for the bookends: “I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2) and “I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt” (19:36). God’s holiness is directed at saving His people, and God’s holiness is bound up with His love. But this holy love is not content to merely “affirm” anyone just as they are or in whatever they want to do or be. No, this holy love is determined to bring Christ into every moment, to see Him in those around us (however weak or foreign or unlovely) until His image emerges clearly in them. We are called to this love because it is precisely the kind of love that God has bestowed upon us.

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Psalm 133: Together in Unity

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INTRODUCTION

Christian unity is a dangerous subject because, believe it or not, it is one of the ironic things we are divided over. What is the nature of true unity? Why should we care? Are denominations really a form of disobedience? Have we really torn apart the seamless robe of Christ?

THE TEXT

“A Song of degrees of David. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: That went down to the skirts of his garments; As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore” (Psalm 133:1-3).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Again, this is another psalm of ascents—one of the psalms that would be sung as pilgrims approached the Temple. Something can be good without being pleasant, but when both good and pleasant come together, it is a true blessing (v. 1). That blessing comes when brethren can dwell together in unity (v. 1). In the economy of Israel, all priests were anointed, but only the high priest was anointed on the head. This unity is like that precious oil that is placed on Aaron’s head, runs down to his beard, and from there to the hem of his garments (v. 2). Clearly a large amount of oil was used—even if you follow the ESV reading, which has the oil running down to the collar. In a change of metaphor, we read that Mount Hermon is famous for dew, descending on the mountains of Zion (v. 3). As Zion proper is about 250 miles south of Hermon, we should note the plural mountains, and take Zion as a generic name for Israel. How will this blessing of unity come? It will be the result of a command from Jehovah Himself (v. 3)—that command summoning life forevermore. This dew waters the ground, and makes it truly fruitful. That is the command of God, the blessing of God. This is His purpose and intention.

“He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, And fill the face of the world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6).

TWO KINDS OF UNITY

As this psalm has praised this particular grace from God in the strongest possible terms, we need to be careful not to distort our understanding of that grace. According to Scripture, there are two kinds of unity that God gives to us. We need to be careful not to muddle them up because if we do, the unfortunate result will be . . . disunity.

The first kind is given to all Christians everywhere in the Person of the Holy Spirit. “Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).

Notice that we already have this unity, which is why we are told to preserve it. We need to be eager in this preservation, laboring at it. The word for unity is the same as that used a few verses down (henotes). The word for bond can mean fetter, or sinew, or that which binds. And the Holy Spirit is the one who ties of the knot of peace. Every Christian has this unity already, and the one charge we have is to pursue a way of life that does not disrupt it.

The second kind of unity is institutional unity. Paul is thinking eschatologically, and is looking forward to the time when the bride of Christ, the Church, is without any spot or wrinkle or any such blemish (Eph. 5:27). God will accomplish this through the governmental gifts that He has provided to the Church—apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor/teachers. “Till we all come in the unity [henotes] of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).

This is the unity of maturity, and we are not supposed to have it yet.

And no end of trouble is caused by people who think that we are supposed to have it, and on the basis of this opinion disrupt their fellowship with saints who differ. It is like the old joke about two ministers who were talking, and one said to the other, “Well, we both serve God, I suppose—you in your way, and I in His.” Because we try to seize an institutional unity we are not supposed to enjoy yet, we wind up disrupting the bond of peace that we really do have.

SIN AS BARRIER

Sin means we are falling short of a standard that we ought not to be falling short of. Sin means we are not doing what we were instructed to do, and obedience is always something that should be in our hands in the present.

Remember that the basic building block of this broader church unity is the family, and the husband and the father is responsible to set the tone for his family. Fathers, you do not have the luxury of being distant, or angry, or sullen, or quiet, or disengaged, or surly. You do not get to flop, or otherwise disrupt a unity that has already been given to you.

The household is a wonderful place for learning the basic steps of this particular dance. In fact, there is no better place. And when you learn that wisdom in the home, you will be equipped to navigate the challenges that will arise with regard to extended family, or neighbors, or companions in business, or fellow church members.

IMMATURITY AS BARRIER

Immaturity means that we are right where we are supposed to be. A three-year-old is not in sin being three-years-old. Now if a ten-year-old started acting like a three-year-old this would actually not be immaturity—it would be sin. Remember that God is very easy to please, but very hard to satisfy. When it comes to the unity of the Church today, God is very easy to please, and hard to satisfy.

And the reason this is true—the only reason, remember—is because the Father was pleased with Christ. Not only so, but the Father is satisfied in Christ. And Christ is our unity. One Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4:5).

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Real Forgiveness

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INTRODUCTION

Everyone knows that the Christian faith revolves around the forgiveness of sins. But because there is a gospel logic involved in it that eludes every form of carnal reasoning, we have to be careful to understand what is actually involved. What is real forgiveness?

THE TEXT

“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:31–32).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

There are two ways of conducting life together. One of them is the enemy of life together, and the other is the true friend of life together. One drives us apart and the other knits us together.

The first is the way is the way of keeping score, with the intention of winning. It is the way of bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander and malice (v. 31). This all sounds pretty bad, but we have to remember that all these plug-uglies travel under an alias. They call themselves righteousness, and have a deep commitment to being right. This approach makes koinonia community impossible.

The alternative is kindness and tenderheartedness. And the way that kindness and tenderheartedness “live out” is by forgiving one another, and doing so in exactly the same way that God has forgiven us for the sake of Jesus Christ (v. 32).

WHAT FORGIVENESS IS NOT

We often feel like we are asking God for His forgiveness when what we are really doing is asking Him to accept our excuses. And because we know that we are to forgive as we were forgiven, as per our text, we often seek to forgive others by agreeing beforehand to accept their excuses, when possible. But (unlike ourselves) they had better have a good one.

Our problem is that, when living together with other sinners, we frequently run smack into what can only be called inexcusable. And because it is inexcusable, our scheme with the excuses cannot work.

Forgiveness deals with sin. And sin, by its very nature, is inexcusable. But what is inexcusable is not (thank the Lord) unforgivable.

PARDON ME AND FORGIVE ME

If you accidentally back into someone during fellowship hour, and make them spill their coffee, you naturally say pardon me, or please excuse me. By this you mean to say that you did what you did to them in a way that was entirely unintentional. They respond accordingly—don’t mention it. No problem. The accident was an accident, and it was therefore excusable.

But suppose you looked across the fellowship hall, and there saw your enemy, as pleased with himself as a conceited Pharisee could be, and so you lowered your shoulder and ran straight into him, knocking him clean over. Under such circumstances, the only reason you would say “pardon me” would be if you had decided to taunt him after bowling him over. In this case, your behavior is inexcusable.

That doesn’t mean that nothing can be done about it. The inexcusable is not the same kind of thing as the unforgivable.

A MIXED BAG

But there is another category. What if we don’t have something that is purely wicked or purely accidental? Suppose it is a mixed bag.

Yes, you snapped at the kids, but it was at the end of two days of migraine headache. Yes, you said some things to your wife that were rude and thoughtless, but she was the one who started the argument, and would not let it go, not even after you had asked her to. You had asked her three times. Yes, you sent an email to your boss that you regret sending, but it was 2 in the morning, and the beer you had made you careless.

There are extenuating circumstances, in other words. But we should all remember two things about this. The first is that we will tend to stretch our legitimate excuse part to cover over our sin part. But the only thing that can actually cover sin is the blood of Jesus Christ. When apologizing, we lead with the excuse. “Bob, sorry about yesterday. I had a long day, and I didn’t really mean what I said.” And Bob often responds in kind (because he wants to play the same game when he needs to). “Oh, well, because you didn’t mean it, forget about it.” In other words, because the “you” who said those things was not the real you, he can let it go.

The second problem is that we want our excuses to be way stretchier than our neighbor’s excuses. But as C.S. Lewis pointed out one time, the chances are excellent that our neighbor’s excuses are way better than we tend to believe. And it is also true that our excuses are way lamer than we think they are. When we handicap the competition between us and our fellow Christians, we are not nearly as objective as we think we are. 

A VARIATION OF THE GOLDEN RULE

The basic Christian response is to forgive as we have been forgiven. In our text, the apostle Paul is simply repeating what the Lord taught us when He taught us to pray. Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask Him to forgive us as we forgive others. The way many Christians live, the room actually ought to become much quieter when we get to that part.

“Lord, please doubt the sincerity of my repentance the way I doubt his. Lord, dismiss my excuses with a wave of your hand the way I dismiss his excuses. Lord, keep a hidden tally so that if I sin in this area again, You can bring everything up again, and throw it in my face, the way I do with him. Amen.”

The Golden Rule teaches us that we should do for others what we wish they would do for us. This is in the same spirit, but there is a higher level of danger in it. Here we are asking God to treat us the way we treat our brother. If I give my brother an orange, he might give me an apple. But if I give my brother a stone when he asked for bread, and then I ask God to treat me in the same way, I may find out the stone is one that will crush me. God can give me a much bigger stone than my brother ever could.

BY GRACE ALONE

But how is this consistent with salvation by grace alone? “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14–15). If you refuse to forgive your brother, you are not failing to earn your salvation. If you refuse to forgive your brother, you are revealing to the world that you have no understanding of what salvation by grace through faith actually is. Remember that Christ is all.

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Where Do Fights Come From?

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Collegiate Reformed Fellowship is the campus ministry of Christ Church and Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho. Our goal is to teach and exhort young men and women to serve, to witness, to stand fast, and to mature in their Christian Faith. We desire to see students get established in a godly lifestyle and a trajectory toward maturity. We also desire to proclaim the Christian worldview to the university population and the surrounding communities. CRF is not an independent ministry. All our activities are supplemental to the teaching and shepherding ministry of CC & TRC. Students involved with CRF are regularly reminded that the most important student ministry takes place at Lord’s Day worship.

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How to Move to Moscow

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INTRODUCTION

As you all know, we have seen a steady stream of folks moving to Moscow, and, as you might not know, it shows no sign of letting up. Up to this point, we have all been pretty flexible, constantly dealing with a new situation. This has been true of those of you who have moved, and it is also true of long-time residents—pretty much everyone is a member of a very different church than you were in two years ago. And when confronted with a new situation, like this one, our reflexive action should be to turn to the Scriptures for direction.

THE TEXT

“Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Peter 1:21–23).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

I want to follow a typical Pauline pattern with this Petrine text. What is the basic doctrinal foundation upon which we are to build, and then, after that, what is it we are supposed to do? First, what are we to believe and trust? And second, how are we supposed to act?

This passage begins with a sincere trust in God. You have believed in God, who raised Jesus from the dead, and who gave Him glory (v. 21). He did this so that your faith and hope might be in God (v. 21). You have been born again, not with perishable seed but rather with imperishable seed (v. 23), an eternal seed. Seeing that you have purified your souls in this way, obeying the truth through the Spirit, what are you then to do?

Because all of this is true, because you have embraced this truth, the thing you are to do is love one another with a pure heart, and make sure that the love is unfeigned. A literal rendering of unfeigned would be “non-hypocritical.” Love one another with a cleansed heart (katharos). And the word for fervently means eagerly, like you are running toward something with outstretched arms.

Because you have obeyed the truth, and trusted God, and have been blessed with the new birth, your love for one another needs to be all in.

LOVE REQUIRES DATA

Of course, love wants to do the right thing, because the motives are right, but because we are limited and finite, we need to be taught by the law of God. Say you borrow your neighbor’s lawn mower, and it blows up while you are using it. You want to do the right thing by your neighbor (love), but what does that look like? Scripture tells us. If you borrowed, you should pay him for the lawn mower. If your neighbor came over and was pushing it when it blew up, you don’t. If you rented it, you don’t owe him a lawn mower. That’s what love looks like.

SOME SCATTERSHOT EXHORTATIONS

With that in mind, this will be my best attempt to imitate the very end of one of Paul’s letters, when he was running out of papyrus.

Conduct all your business in the sight of God. Cut no corners. Do not expect anyone to cut you slack because you are “a brother” or a “kirker.” Remember that regeneration does not make anyone’s memory perfect, so write your commitments down (Ps. 15:4). Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matt. 7:12), which is not the same thing as waiting for others to do unto you as they would have you do unto them. That’s not in there.

Be warm and friendly toward everyone, but do not make fast friends too quickly. Do not glom onto anybody. If you make friends too quickly, you will tend to do it on the basis of personality, instead of on the basis of character. Bad companions corrupt good morals (1 Cor. 15:33), and sometimes these bad companions aren’t necessarily bad, just bad for you. Navigating friendship is a big deal (Prov. 18:24)

Get your bearings slowly. There is an awful lot going on, and give yourself time to acclimatize before making any major life-changing decisions. We assume that you newcomers will be pitching when the time is right, but if you jump in too quickly, you greatly increase the chances of a misfire (Prov. 18:13).

Here is a delicate one. Be grateful for what the Lord is doing here in Moscow, without in any way feeling superior over it. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7). And do everything you can to avoid disparaging the places you came from. The same goes for your previous spiritual leaders, even if they let you down. Especially if they let you down. Spiritual pride is insidious, and it would be easy to let gratitude morph into pride. But also take that your battle against pride not lure you into ingratitude.

If you were to move to Sri Lanka, you would expect things to be different, and so you would be in some measure prepared. But if you move to Canada or the UK, you are constantly thrown by things being almost what you might expect, but which are somehow not. Within the continental United States, there are significant cultural differences from region to region, and then we have our own kirker culture layered on top of that. As Moses knew, it is tough being a stranger in a strange land (Ex. 2:22).

Returning to the passage from Peter, be quick to forgive. Love is the only oil that can make this machinery run smoothly. Check that oil regularly. Cultivate your relationship with God the Father through Christ, in the power of the Spirit, because our fulfillment of the second greatest commandment is going to be the direct result of our zeal to fulfill the first.

“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:20–21).

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