Saturday, November 2, 2013

Love your neighbor

Jesus summarized the fulfilling of the law (old covenant terminology for living the faithful Christian life) as "loving God and loving neighbor".  Everyone needs love, literally everyone.  That means that the grumpy old man next door, the gay teen down the street, and the immodest and inappropriate woman at work.  It is our responsibility to understand what that means and to live that out.  The Mormans go door to door and make a small impact.  The evangelicals have their huge revival meetings, TV extravaganzas, and seeker friendly mega churches, but only make a small impact.  These things typically don't work that well because there is no personal connection.  In short, there is not "real" love going on.  When you interact with someone and communicate to them that you genuinely care about them, over time they will respond, usually in a positive way.  You might not lead them to church (right away) but the gospel never fails.  You will change someones life by loving them.
We must overcome our personal bias and learn to love the unlovely.  This is much easier to do when we remember that we, ourselves, are extremely unlovely and unlovable, but God took the first step and died for us when there was nothing good in us.
Take the first step and love your neighbor.  He might just love you back.

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