WHY CANNOT CHRISTIANS JUST GET ALONG?
Matthew 22:37-39
37 And He said to him, “’YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ 38 “This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 “The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’
Let us pray: “OUR HEAVENLY FATHER, GIVE US A GOOD SENSE, A GOOD MIND AND A GOOD HEART SO THAT WE WILL UNDERSTAND YOUR WORDS. INSPIRE US AS WE LEARN SO THAT WE WILL LIVE A LIFE IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR WILL, IN JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.
AMEN.
I have entitled my message this morning as a question.
WHY CANNOT CHRISTIANS JUST GET ALONG? I will say that again. WHY CANNOT CHRISTIANS JUST GET ALONG?
God created us human being to enjoy intimate relationship with Him and not only that but with one another. And when Jesus Christ becomes the Lord of these two relationships, we will be able to experience the meaningful intimacy that was part of God’s original plan. However, so much has changed since that first relational encounter at creation. Our relationships then have become damaged and fractured by sin.
As human beings, we live in relationship with other human beings. And there is no escaping from it. God made us to live in harmony with one another. Also nature shows that we are meant to exist in relationships. God made us to be in relationship with other people. And yet, no matter how basic to our existence and identity as humans, something has gone wrong with our relationships. And all around us we can see examples of relationships gone sour, relationships gone really badly. Most of the pain and heartache we suffer as humans, we suffer because of bad relationships.
But let me remind you this morning that God loves us and He obviously cares about our relationships, which form such an important part of our existence. God wants us to have good, healthy, affirming relationships. I want you to understand this folks: That our interactions with others, the true measure of our walk with Christ will be revealed. How you treat others reveals your relationship with God.
So where is Christ in your relationship now? Where is Christ in your relationship with God and your relationship with others? If Christ is not Lord of your relationships with others, then the devil will take over, and we will experience damaged and fractured relationships. And that will hinder God’s work.
WHY CANNOT CHRISTIANS JUST GET ALONG? There two main kinds of relationships that Christians are concerned with: One is their relationship with God and second is their relationship with other human beings.
Our text this morning tells us that Jesus spoke of two great commandments that:“ YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.” And “The second is like it, is that: ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” And we often speak of these as our vertical and our horizontal relationships.
Here Jesus quotes from Deut. 6:5 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” There must first be love in the heart before a person can, in the strength and by the grace of Christ, begin to observe the precepts of God’s Law. Obedience without love is as impossible as it is worthless. But where love is present, a person will automatically set out to order his life in harmony with the will of God as expressed in His commandments.
Jesus wants us to love God with all our hearts. And His purpose here in enumerating different parts of one’s being, is simply another way of saying that love for God, if truly present, will permeate every aspect of the being. And now Jesus is setting the stage for the next command:
Then He said, “In the same way,” ‘Just like this one,’” being based on the great principle of love, and like it in requiring the concerted attention and cooperation of all parts of one’s being. The same cooperation needed to love God is the same cooperation needed to love your neighbor.
“That you love your neighbor:” Jesus here quotes from Leviticus 19:18 “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” “Neighbor” refers to a fellow Israelite. Your neighbor this morning is the one belongs to this church. Friends we are all neighbors. Jesus, however, widened the definition of “neighbor” to include all who are in need of help.
The law of love toward God and man was by no means new. Jesus was the first, however to unite these two thoughts of loving God and loving your neighbor, as summing up “The whole duty of man.” Even Micah comes very close to the same idea: Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Love your neighbor as yourself: Man’s natural tendency is to make self first, irrespective of obligations incumbent upon him in his relations to God and to his fellow men. Friends! Let me tell you this: To be completely selfless in dealing with your neighbor, one must first love God supremely. This is the very foundation of all right conduct.
Now, Jesus said that the commandment to love God is the greatest commandment. But here is something very surprising. Turn with me to Matthew 5:23, 24. It says: 23 “Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.”
Now the question is: Which relationship has priority? Offering a gift at the altar was an act of worshipping God. Now Jesus’ statement appears to say that repairing our horizontal relationships takes precedence over attending to the vertical relationship. Let me ask you this question: Does this text really change the priority? And my answer is: NO. You see, when you repair and fix your relationship with others, that is when you repair your relationship with God. That is when you truly worship God.
Broken relationships hinder your relationship with God. Worshipping God is listening to God’s commands. And when God says that you first need to reconcile and fix your relationship with your neighbor then come to me; that is exactly how God want us to worship Him. There’s no other way around it.
If you have a problem or grievances with someone, you should resolve the problem as soon as possible. We are hypocrites when we claim to love God while we hate others. We are hypocrites when we claim to love God while backstabbing our neighbors. We are hypocrites when we claim that God is our Father while out in the community, we treat our neighbors as nothing. How do you treat your neighbors when you are not in church? Friends!!! Your attitudes toward others reflect your relationship with God.
The offering of sacrifices to God along with prayers was the central act of worship in Israelite religion. But the prophets warned the people of Israel that without righteousness, without dealing justly with our fellow human beings, such worship was not acceptable. Even the keeping of the Sabbath and the festivals, they became offensive when such piety enshrouds the mistreatment of other people.
Isaiah 1:10-17 make it very clear that God has had enough: “’Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; Wash and make yourself clean…. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow’”
You see, the problem with Israel was the temptation to think that they could substitute ritual correctness (vertical relationship) for righteous behavior toward their neighbors (horizontal relationship). What they seemed to forget that the Ten Commandments cover both dimensions and that one without the other is worthless in God’s sight.
Christians face a similar temptation. Christians are tempted to substitute doctrinal correctness for righteous dealing. In other words Christians think that attending church on Sabbath requesting God to attend to their individual needs while they frown at their neighbors will make them righteous in the eyes of God. No it is impossible to please God in that manner.
We fall into the problem of pretending that we are worshipping God by way of presenting our offerings, attending Sabbath services while covering our mistreatment of others, we think that we are doing right with God. God is not listening, you need to go and fix, you need to go and reconcile with your brother first then come to the altar. This is a huge mistake in the thinking of Christians.
But listen to this: God is very clear: Isaiah 1: 15-16 says “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen…. 16 Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil.” Friends, no matter how many prayers you offer, and still you have problems with your neighbor, God is not going to listen to you.
James made it clear: James 1:13 “For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” James reproves his readers for not giving practical support to the needy. Only God in His mercy can forgive our sins. But when we withhold forgiveness from others after having received it ourselves, we show that we don’t understand or appreciate God’s mercy toward us.
Turn with me to: 1 John 4:20, 21. “If someone says, “I love God,” and hate his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.” Brothers and sisters I want you to figure this out: How can you love God that you cannot see while hating your neighbor that you see? Folks!!! It is very easy to make such a verbal claim, that “I love God,” but the apostle shows us that, it is no less easy to test the truth of the claim.
It is natural and necessary to profess verbally, but it is not sufficient. It needs to be corroborated by your attitude toward your fellow neighbor. An examination of the quality of a man’s love for his neighbor will reveal much, concerning the genuineness of his love for God. John clearly shows what he means by “hate,” he is implying that you prefer yourself above your neighbor. In other words: “You look down at your neighbor.”
The text says: “If someone says, “I love God,” and hate his brother, he is a liar.” Are we liars?
We have the test here! We should know by now whether we truly love God or not. If we fail in the test, but still claim to have passed it, we are indeed deliberate liars.
The finite human mind finds it much easier to love the seen rather than the unseen. But how cay you love the unseen and hate the seen? Those that do not experience the lesser affection of loving his neighbor cannot hope to reach the higher attainment of loving an invisible God. He who loves his brother is helping himself to love God; he is exercising the attribute that is supremely characteristic of God.
Without the indwelling God, who is love, we cannot love our neighbors, we cannot love our brothers and we cannot love our sisters. We cannot have the greater without the lesser nor the lesser without the greater. We love both God and man, but our love is more easily tested by our attitude to men than by our attitude to God.
He who does not love his neighbor cannot love God. The apostle has shown that hatred for one’s brother and love for God are incompatible. Here, John emphasizes that love for man is actually a fulfillment of divine command on the part of those who already love God.
Friends!!! It is so easy to say: “we love God when that love doesn’t cost us anything more than just attending the Sabbath service. But the real test of our love for God is how we treat the people right in front of us – our fellow believers. We cannot truly love God while neglecting to love those who are created in His own image.
Then John tied the doctrinal and the ethical together with these words in 1 John 5: 1, 2. 1 John 5:1, 2 “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.” And in chapter 4:7, John ranked the command “To love,” above all: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Friends! How can you claim that God is your Father when you dislike some of your brothers and sisters? If God is your Father and God is my Father then I must be your brother. And if you claim that God is your Father and hate your brother, Friends! There is something terribly wrong with our religion. There is something wrong with our worship.
Let me tell you this morning that, “True religion, I’ll say that again, True religion,” the love of God and the love of human beings are inseparably laminated together. You cannot separate them. Our relationship with God is a sham, if it is not joined to a right relationship with our neighbor, with our brother and sister – to merciful and wise human relationships.
Some Christians tend to love only those they like. They choose whom to talk to. They choose whom to smile to and they turn away and avoid Christians they don’t like. Let me tell you this: Loving and Liking are two different things. Liking is something you feel, but loving is something you do. LOVING is a principle of action that doesn’t depend on how you feel about a person. Jesus commanded us to love one another and not to like one another, because no one can produce feelings on command.
Jesus not only said that one of the two great commandments is to love your neighbor as yourself, but He also said, to love even your enemies. And He indicated who our neighbors are by telling the story of the Good Samaritan.
What Jesus is saying here is that our neighbor is anyone whom we can help. The story is obviously don’t tell us how to feel; it tells us what to do. The Good Samaritan went out of his way to help someone who belonged to a different denomination and a different ethnic group. If everyone lived that way, the church would be a much better place, that’s for sure.
It all comes down to the Golden Rule: In Matthew 7:12 “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” This is commonly known as the Golden Rule. In other words: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to you.” The Golden Rule as Jesus formulated it, is the foundation of active goodness and mercy – the kind of love God shows to us every day.
The question is: Who is Lord of your relationship with others today? It is crucial that you need to understand that your relationship with others depends on your relationship with God. God created us, and He alone can do the changing in our lives. It is only through a close connection with God can we have the kind of relationships with others that God wants.
Friends! We must have a vital connection with Christ. When we have intimate communion with our Savior, it will take away the desire for earthly and sensual gratifications. Then we will love our neighbors as ourselves. When we love our neighbors, there will be no distinctions between colors. When we love our neighbors, there will be no distinctions between black and white. When we love our neighbors, there will be no distinctions between Tongans and Americans. When we love our neighbors, there will be no distinctions between races. Then all our powers of body, soul and spirit should be devoted to God.
When we make Jesus, Lord or our relationships, we receive His grace. That grace, strengthens us to withstand the pressure from the devil, to withstand the temptation to turn away from your neighbor, ignoring them but to love them. Jesus gave us the perfect example of how to reveal God to others, and that is to be in relationship with Heaven.
There is nothing greater we can offer those to whom we are witnessing, than the healthy relationships to which the Savior calls us. While on earth, Jesus spent little time preaching but much time showing love and concern for those with whom He came in contact: Those with leprosy, the Greek, the Samaritan, female or tax collector. Likewise, we as Christians should be concern about how we relate to each other. To convert others and to testify of God’s love, we need to experience that in our own relationship with others.
Remember, Jesus’ final recorded prayer: He did not pray for their safety; neither did He pray for their success or happiness but that they should be one, as the Father and Son are One. Friends, this is our community. This is God’s church and those who live under the lordship of Christ will experience a unique sense of belonging to this fellowship. We seek God first through fixing and repairing of our relationships with others first.
It is simple as that. We cannot satisfy God if we continue to hate our neighbors. To love your neighbors and to love your enemies, power and strength come only from God. The Holy Spirit is our only strength. Without Him we can do nothing and the devil will use us.
Friends!!! I appeal to you this morning that you allow the Holy Spirit to work in your lives to that degree where we will have intimate fellowship with one another.
May God bless you ALL.
MAY THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU; MAY THE LORD MAKE HIS FACE SHINE UPON YOU, AND BE GRACIOUS TO YOU. MAY THE LORD TURN HIS FACE TOWARD YOU AND GIVE YOU PEACE. MAY THE GRACE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE LOVE OF GOD THE FATHER. AND THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE HOLY SPIRIT BE WITH YOU ALL.
AMEN.
