By this
we know love, that he [Jesus] laid down his life for us…
[Jesus]
said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And
a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
A new
commandment I [Jesus] give to you, that you love one another: just as I have
loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that
you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.)
John 3:16, 1 John 3:16, Matthew 22:35-39 & John
13:34-35
The above passages help us see
where St Paul is coming from when he explains that love is necessary to create
understanding.
Love motivated God to send his
Son into the world; love motivated the Son, Jesus, to come and lay down his life for
us. Jesus wants his disciples to live under the same sort of motivation: to
love God with their whole selves and to love their neighbours as themselves. Although
that statement is not in the Sermon on the Mount, that is the sort of lifestyle Jesus describes in it. Moreover, we are to love even our enemies and do
good to those who persecute us (see Matthew 5:38-48).
Jesus went still further. He said
that it would be by their love for one another that people would know who his
disciples were. The implication is that theology, preaching and even evangelism are
insufficient to distinguish Christians from the rest of society. Love is indispensable; only love is adequate!
In Corinth, the lack of love among
the Christians was very public. Paul not only criticised the way they
celebrated the Lord’s Supper but also for taking each other to court: see 1
Corinthians 6:1-11. This was not litigation to resolve genuine disputes in
areas of legitimate differences of opinion but to expose one another’s cheating!
‘You yourselves wrong and defraud – even your own brothers!’
Although this sort of behaviour
was normal in Corinth, the idolatry of money kept the Christians from loving
one another as Jesus described and undermined their witness to the rest of the
city. I am sure this is why Paul wrote, ‘Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not
rather be defrauded?’ and warned them that thieves, the greedy and swindlers would
not inherit the kingdom of God.
_____________________________________________
You
have been sent this e-mail because you subscribed to Reflections on God & Money.
Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans
2013. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for circulation to family and
friends on a non-profit basis.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
© 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
Handling
money and dealing with debt can be complicated and neither the author nor
anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for
any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.
