Friday, July 1, 2011

Others





Christianity is a religion with a focus on others. A religion that once you are in it. (saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone) you are called upon to love God with all your heart, mind soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. How is that worked out: one way is the following:

"and the LORD passed before him (Moses) and proclaimed "The LORD, the LORD, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." (Exodus 34:6 ESV)  That is who God is. Steadfast love that brought Christ down from heaven and placed Him on a cross for us as a sacrifice for our sins. That's Christ's concern for others, you and me and everyone who is in the body of Christ.

God's concern for others - human beings, He created caused Him to move for our good. God who is love is also just and He has to punish sin. He will remove all sin from His presence and placed it in hell, then the lake of fire. We all were scheduled for that outcome, unless God acted, unless He intervened to save us from that
terrible, horrible, yet just punishment due to sin.

We are commanded by God to love Him, yes because He saved us from His Just Wrath, but because He is altogether Lovely, steadfast love is His character, yet we will never experience that character trait unless we, once saved by Him , do not live in obedience to Him. The Bible states that Jesus said if you love Me you will keep my commandments, and it also states that if we don't love our fellow human being who we can see, how can we say that we love Christ, who we have never seen.

We are called upon to love our neighbor, we are called upon to pray for our neighbor, to help our neighbor, to show our love for Christ to our neighbor. LORD God, we pray that Your Spirit will lead us in our efforts to be obedient to You, to love You, by loving our neighbor. In Christ name. Amen.

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