Love Means Obedience

Then the second must be found in John 15:12; "My command is this: love each other as I have loved you."

It would seem from reading the scriptures that the best way to love God is to love God’s children. To be, as Agatha Burgess put it, a person who lives by the side of the road - someone who is a friend to people.

You guys understand this better than you think you do.

When I was in college I spent a summer working with the Leonard Street Church of Christ in Pensacola Florida, as a youth intern. It was a wonderful summer and I got to live with the Rene’ family. My parents came down for my birthday and when they arrived, the first person my mother hugged wasn’t me, but Mrs. Rene’.

She stood there for the longest time thanking her for taking care of her son, for worrying about him, for holding him accountable, for making him keep his room straight, for loving him. My mother felt loved by that family because that family loved me.

The best way to show your love to someone is to love their kids. I didn’t understand it that summer day in Pensacola, but I do know. You want to win my friendship, my affection? Be good to my boys. And I believe the same could be said for everyone here.

When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment, he didn’t hesitate. "Love God with everything you’ve got." But then he added something which wasn’t asked. He told the questioner the second greatest commandment.

There were hundreds of commands from which Jesus could have chosen. But the one He chose was the one that requires us to love God’s children. I think the reason He chose that one is because it’s the best way of loving God himself.

In 1 Corinthians 3: 16 - 17 Paul explained why the way we treat each other is so important to God.

"Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple."

In Matthew 25 Jesus said it this way; when you feed the hungry, you feed me.

When you house the homeless, you shelter me.

When you visit the imprisoned, you visit me.

For some strange, inexplicable reason, God identifies so closely with us that our pain becomes his, when we are loved, he is loved. We are his body, he is our soul.

I think sometimes we have a hard time believing that God identifies with us. That God loves us so much he feels what we feel. Some of us just can’t believe that God would want to be so intimate with someone so, so ... what’s your adjective?

Dirty? Shamed? Broken? Worthless? Hopeless?

James says that the word of God is like a mirror. We stand before it soul-naked and see ourselves as we really are. No pretence. No masks. Nothing to hide the wounds and scars of sin.

Some of us tonight feel like Peter in the High Priest’s courtyard, nailed by the piercing eyes of Jesus right in the middle of denying that we know him.

Some us feel like David caught in Nathan’s narrative trap, guilty as we can be and nowhere to hide.

Some of us feel like old Noah, hung-over and shamed by our reckless behavior.