SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/3/2020 9:46 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “Love
Your Enemies”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
5:44a
Message of the verse: “44 “But I say to
you, love your enemies,”
We
continue with some very heavy things as we move forward looking at this very
brief section of Scripture. I want to
look at something found in the gospel of John chapter 13 and verse 34, and then
look exactly what happened before that verse:
“"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even
as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” This is pretty straight forward as Jesus
gives this new commandment that they should love one another in the same way
that He has loved them. So what happened
before this statement? “3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had
given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was
going back to God, 4 got up from supper,
and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. 5 Then He poured
water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them
with the towel with which He was girded” (John 12:3-5).
Jesus
chose 12 disciples while on earth, men that came from different backgrounds,
men that did not always get along with each other, men who even disobeyed Jesus
who was God. “Yet everything that Jesus
said to them and dif for them was completely and without exception for their
good. That was the kind of love He
commanded them to have for Him and for each other. And that is the kind of love He commands all
of His followers to have even for their enemies” writes John MacArthur. He then goes on to quote from commentator R.
C. H. Lenski who writes,
“[Love] indeed, sees all the
hatefulness and the wickedness of the enemy, feels his stabs and his blows, may
even have something to do toward warding them off; but all this simply fills
the loving heart with the one desire and aim, to free its enemy from his hate,
to rescue him from his sin, and thus to save his soul. Mere affection is often blind, but even then
it thinks that it sees something attractive in the one toward whom it goes out;
the higher love may be nothing attractive in the one so loved…its inner motive
is simply to bestow true blessing on the one, loved, to do him the highest good…I
cannot like a low, mean criminal who may have robbed me and threatened my life;
I cannot like a false, lying, slanderous fellow who, perhaps, has vilified me
again and again; but I can by the grace of Jesus Christ love them all, see what
is wrong with them, desire and work to do them only good, most of all to free
them from their vicious ways.” (The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel
[Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1964], p. 247)
Since
the upmost importance of this subject I will quote one more paragraph from
MacArthur’s commentary, and Lord willing will finish this section in our next
SD.
“Love’s
question is never who to love—because we are to love everyone—but only how to
love most helpfully. We are not to love
merely in terms of feelings but in terms of service. God’s love embraces the entire world (John
3:16), and He loved each of us even while we were still sinners and His enemies
(Rom. 5:8-10). Those who refuse to trust
in God are His enemies, but He is not theirs.
In the same way, we are not to be enemies of those who may be enemies to
us. From their perspective, we are their
enemies, but from our perspective, they should be our neighbors.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I suppose that the best thing to do for me as
I continue through this section that continues to step on my toes is to learn
more about agape love that God loves me with.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to trust the Lord to teach me the
things He knows that I need to learn.
10/3/2020 10:12 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment