Jesus Raises the Bar

So many times in the church we find people splitting hairs over things that don't matter. When it comes to tithing, we ask, "Are we supposed to give from our net income or gross?" or "Is my whole tithe supposed to go the the church, or can I designate some elsewhere?"  When it comes to service, we ask, "Is it better to serve inside or outside of the church?" or "If I can't serve with a joyful heart, isn't it better if I don't serve at all?"  About missions we say, "There are starving people in America. Why do we send people overseas?" (Even though those asking that question often are not doing anything about the problem they are using to justify not sending others.) or "Doesn't my issue with _______________ excuse me from going?"  And the list could go on.

These may sound like decent questions on the surface, but the reality is, most of the time they are excuses to keep talking about scripture rather than acting in obedience to it. In the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7, Jesus repeatedly says (especially in chapter 5), "You have heard that it was said...(referring to different things in the law), but I tell you..." Every time He says this, He raises the bar of expectation. While He did come to fulfill the law, to take away the burden of it, and to be a substitutionary sacrifice for what we could not accomplish on our own by following the law, He expected that His followers, responding out of love for the Father, would do even greater things than the law required.

Yet Jesus didn't leave that as a burdensome, cumbersome thing we have to wade through and figure out. He boiled down the whole law into two simple instructions. In Matthew 22:37-40, when asked what the greatest commandment was, He said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest command. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Two things. That's all we have to do.

There is a reason that loving God is first. If we don't first love Him, we cannot possibly keep the second. Our selfish, sinful nature will take over, and loving people is the farthest thing from our mind. But if we love God first and allow Him to shape our character, loving people will become more and more natural to us. We also need to know that loving people does not necessarily mean giving them what they want or agreeing with them when they are wrong. It means meeting their actual physical, emotional or spiritual needs, not their selfish or sinful desires. And we need to remember that the same thing applies to our expectations of love for us from others. If they are truly loving us, they will do and say what is true and best, not what we want to hear or receive.

If our motivation for everything we do and everything we say is to love God and love others, then we will, by default, begin to live up to the expectations of Jesus. We will live and love and respond to people and situations in God-honoring, selfless, good and holy ways. As we do these things, no one will be able to find fault with us. For, as Galatians 5:22-25 says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."