In One Word

from my message on Sept. 7, 2014, from Romans 13:8-10

Commandments.  You may have heard we have commandments in the church.  How many? 10!  I am sure that you can name them all.

1.  No other gods, worship Yahweh alone
2. No graven images
3.  Respect God's name
4.  Remember the Sabbath, it's about rest
5. Honor parents, in fact, all elders
6.  No murder
7.  No adultery, take care of sexuality
8.  No stealing
9.  No false witness
10.  No coveting

I had a pecan buyer in my church in San Saba.  He said, "Preacher, I've broken all the commandments but 2, and I'm not telling you which 2."

I am sure that you have kept all of these commandments.

If you read the Old Testament carefully, especially the first 5 books, you will find that these 10 commandments have been expanded to 613 commandments!  Things like, you can't eat pork or shrimp, you can wear 2 different kinds of cloth together, you can't get a tattoo.  I am sure that you have kept all of those too.

I am glad that when Jesus comes along and is asked about what is the greatest commandment, he says, To love God with all of one's being, and to love neighbor as oneself.  Paul in this letter to Rome, keeps it simple, saying the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "love your neighbor as yourself."

Easier to say than to do.  The college ethics professor said, "It is quite possible to make an A in this class and still be a lousy person."   To love neighbor takes it out of the world of theory and makes it very concrete.   As the Peanuts cartoon has Linus saying, "I love mankind; it's people I can't stand."

To love neighbor as oneself might look like this story:

Years ago, a Johns Hopkins professor gave a group of graduate students this assignment: Go to the slums. Take 200 boys, between the ages of 12 and 16, and investigate their background and environment. Then predict their chances for the future. 

The students, after consulting social statistics, talking to the boys and compiling much data, concluded that 90 percent of the boys would spend some time in jail. 

Twenty-five years later, another group of graduate students was given the job of testing the prediction. They went back to the same area. Some of the boys - by then men - were still there, a few had died, some had moved away, but they got in touch with 180 of the original 200. They found that only four of the group had ever been sent to jail. 

Why was it that these men, who had lived in a breeding place of crime, had such a surprisingly good record? The researchers were continually told: "Well, there was a teacher ..." 

They pressed further and found that in 75 percent of the cases it was the same woman. The researchers went to this teacher, now living in a home for retired teachers. How had she exerted this remarkable influence over that group of children? Could she give them any reason why these boys should have remembered her? 

"No," she said, "no, I really couldn't." And then, thinking back 
over the years, she said musingly, more to herself than to her 

questioners: "I loved those boys. ..."

Love makes the difference.  The word for love that is used 5 times in this short passage is agape.  It is God's love for us.  It is the sacrificial love that Christ demonstrated in his life, death, and resurrection.  Sometimes, when we experience that love, that forgiveness, that newness of life, we are able to love others as ourselves.

You may remember Chuck Colson from the Nixon years.  He had a powerful conversion to the Christian faith.  He said this:

Several years ago my son Chris and I were discussing the evidences for God. As I argued that if there were no God, it would be impossible to account for moral law, my grandson Charlie, then 4, interrupted.

"But Grandpa," he said, "there is a God." I nodded, assuring him that I agreed.

"See, if there wasn't a God, Grandpa," he continued, "people couldn't love each other."

Charlie is right. Only the overarching presence and provision of God assures that both Christian and non-Christian enjoy human dignity and a means to escape our naturally sinful condition. Without His presence, we could not long survive together on this planet. 
-Charles Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict (New York: William Morrow/Zondervan 
Publishing House, 1987), 71.

I challenge you to love one another in a particular way.  On October 19, we are not going to have worship services here; we are going to be in service to God's wider world.  Plus I am challenging you to invite someone, your Plus One, to join you in mission that day.  I am challenging you to be in prayer about what mission you are drawn to and most especially to your Plus One.  Who is God putting on your heart to invite?  

The good news is that Christ loves us, and because of that we can love one another.