May 3 - Jesus on God’s Love: That We Exceed Others’ Actions

“‘For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?’” (Matthew 5:46–47).

These words of Jesus were perhaps the most devastating and offensive ones the religious leaders had ever heard. The Lord bluntly stripped away their hypocrisy to reveal that their love was nothing more than the ordinary self-centered love common among the despised tax collectors and Gentiles. Tax collectors were dishonest, traitorous extortioners; Gentiles were considered unfit to be people of God.

Yet the type of love displayed by the scribes and Pharisees, according to Jesus’ infallible assessment, was no better than the persons’ whom they so looked down upon. In essence, our Lord declared that their righteousness was no better than that of the worst and lowest of other classes and groups.

Christ urges believers to have a much higher standard of righteousness than the world’s low standard. The world should notice Christians as being more honest employees and more helpful and caring neighbors. The culture should always notice that saints love as God loves: “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). J. Oswald Sanders once wrote, “The Master expects from His disciples such conduct as can be explained only in terms of the supernatural.”

Yes, we can become so comfortable in our culture and so indoctrinated in its ways that we are nearly indistinguishable in our likes, our schedules, and our matters of importance. Ask yourself what makes you appear different from the unsaved world around you. Is it just by what you don’t do, or by Jesus’ active brand of love and righteousness?

Ask yourself what makes you appear different from the unsaved world around you. Is it just by what you don’t do, or by Jesus’ active brand of love and righteousness?

Just before His undeserved execution as a criminal by the Roman government at the hateful demand of the religonists of His culture, Jesus gave a final instruction to His gathered students:

"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (Jn. 13:34-35 AV).

"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (Jn. 15:11 AV).

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What does this mean to the Spirit-born servant-friend of Jesus, Lord and Master? The definition of this kind of love, this "ahgahpay" (in the Greek) is this:

A sovereign preference of one above self and other(s).

To love others as He loved those clinging to Him as His syudents, one must first be committed to Him above all else, to set oneself aside for His service, to be inducted into a regularly assembled Company of Disciples, to progress to full age in learning of His ways by being discipled under another more mature servant, and then to go abroad and recruit more learners of Jesus' ways of righteousness in caring for others that one meets, with a special preference for the fellow communicants in His Local Assembled Company of Servants.

Will God be pleased if the practitioner attempts to pursue this outside of an overriding total personal commitment to The Christ and rebirth in the Spirit?

The scriptural answer to that proposition is "No."

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