“Can you find the baby puffer fish?” Amelia asked Ezra after bringing him one of his favorite lift-the-flap board books and climbing up into the chair at the kitchen table next to his. Valentina had already fed the kids and we were finally sitting down to our lunch. Ezra had been clingy all morning and as he struggled relentlessly to climb into his mama’s lap, in an attempt to draw his attention away, I asked him to find his favorite baby sea creature book. He was not in the mood to cooperate but Amelia swooped in, grabbing his book from the shelf and handed it over.
We all got a laugh when I asked him to find the baby dugong. A dugong is part of the manatee family that was hunted almost to extinction but whose population is now thriving. Ezra, in the chair next to his mom, turned immediately to the page and pointing, repeated “ding dong, ding dong.” Convincing him otherwise was futile so his mom prompted him to find a baby dolphin and the game continued until we finished our meal.
Amelia shows her love for her baby brother in many ways. When Ezra resists help from adults, he will let Amelia feed him bites or hand him things. I can remember when she was the same way with Thomas. When he gets hurt or angry at being told no, she wraps her arms around him tenderly. She pulls her bathroom stool up beside mine to cheer him on with potty training and when it’s time for bath, she stoops down, hands on knees, and sweetly intones, “Time for bath, buddy. Do you want deep bubbles?” They are siblings close in age so of course they fight but their love for one another is obvious. Fellow Christian, ours should be as well.
“Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?
For even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?
Even sinners do the same.
And if you lend to those from whom you hope to be repaid, what credit is that to you?
Even sinners lend to sinners, so that they may be repaid in full.
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back.
Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to ungrateful and evil people.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Give, and it will be given to you: A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be poured into your lap.
For the measure you use will be the measure you receive.””
Luke 6:31-38 NET
https://bible.com/bible/107/luk.6.31-38.NET
Jesus taught Jewish people and others living in Roman occupied Jerusalem and its territories. Their property could be confiscated and they could be pressed into service temporarily or permanently. Their lives were endangered if they expressed opinions other than Caesar’s and they lived as second rate citizens in the Promised Land. God had sent the prophets to warn them of the cost of straying from His Lordship and many paid the price over the years. Faithful ones remained, those who waited for Messiah and recognized and accepted Jesus as Son of the Most High but life remained hard. People flocked to Jesus for relief, some political but others desperate enough to find that He was everything they needed.
“They came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, and those who suffered from unclean spirits were cured.
The whole crowd was trying to touch him, because power was coming out from him and healing them all.”
Luke 6:17-19 NET
https://bible.com/bible/107/luk.6.19.NET
Unearthly power flowed from Jesus as He walked the earth. It was as if His Godhood could not be contained by His human frame. Only where unbelief reigned was His power limited. (Matthew 13:58, Mark 6:5) I believe this is true today where His love is concerned and my reasoning is twofold. We allow the world and its wisdom to define love rather than the Word of God, equally His written Word, the Bible and His Son, the living Word. Additionally we choose which parts of His Word to embrace, rejecting others just as forcefully as Thomas Jefferson who removed any trace of Jesus’s deity or miracles, reducing the four gospels to a purely moral handbook, with his Jefferson Bible. Only faith in the Godhood of Jesus enables the kind of obedience Jesus commended when He said,
““If you love me, you will obey my commandments.
Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it does not see him or know him.
But you know him, because he resides with you and will be in you.
I will not abandon you as orphans, I will come to you.
In a little while the world will not see me any longer, but you will see me; because I live, you will live too.
You will know at that time that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you.
The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me.
The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.”
“Lord,” Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him.
The person who does not love me does not obey my words.
And the word you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.
I have spoken these things while staying with you.
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will cause you to remember everything I said to you.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give it to you as the world does.
Do not let your hearts be distressed or lacking in courage.
You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’
If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am.
I have told you now before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.
I will not speak with you much longer, for the ruler of this world is coming.
He has no power over me, but I am doing just what the Father commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.”
John 14:15-31 NET
https://bible.com/bible/107/jhn.14.15-29.NET
Jesus’s perfect obedience to the Father took the form of a Roman cross. It is little wonder that His call to follow Him means taking up my cross daily, denying self-interest, self-gratification, self-fulfillment, all the things our society teaches us to strive for, in favor of selfless surrender.
“Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness?
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.”
Romans 6:16-18 NET
https://bible.com/bible/107/rom.6.16-18.NET
Being enslaved to righteousness is not what the world would have you believe. Righteousness is more about relationship than right living. I can be clothed in righteousness only by accepting the free gift of God in Christ. It is His righteousness imputed to me. “For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.”
(Galatians 3:26-27) I am changed as I allow God to accurately reproduce His character in me.(Eugene Peterson The Message)
“throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception.
Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.
Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.”
Ephesians 4:22-24 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/eph.4.22-24.NLT
As the Spirit of God does the work of accurately reproducing the character of God in me, my life begins to bear fruit, the fruit of His Spirit. His love expressed through me must look like His.
“Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God.
The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him.
In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another.
No one has seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit.
And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us.
God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him.
We love because he loved us first.
If anyone says “I love God” and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar, because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
And the commandment we have from him is this: that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too.”
1 John 4:7-13, 16, 19-21 NET
https://bible.com/bible/107/1jn.4.19-21.NET
Our relationships with our fellow Christians like the relationships within our families are meant to be a proving ground, a place to practice loving well. We will not do this perfectly as Jesus did but this knowledge is not an excuse for not trying. Walking by faith and not by sight is a lifelong pursuit that ends when I step into His presence for eternity.
“But we who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not just please ourselves.
Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.
For even Christ did not please himself, but just as it is written, “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”
For everything that was written in former times was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through encouragement of the scriptures we may have hope.
Now may the God of endurance and comfort give you unity with one another in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Romans 15:1-6 NET
https://bible.com/bible/107/rom.15.4-6.NET
“I will praise the Lord as long as I live!
I will sing praises to my God as long as I exist!”
Psalms 146:2 NET
https://bible.com/bible/107/psa.146.2.NET
“The Lord takes delight in his faithful followers, and in those who wait for his loyal love.”
Psalms 147:11 NET
https://bible.com/bible/107/psa.147.11.NET
His love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” (1 Corinthians 13:7) God’s faithful love endures forever.
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