Remember, Your Brother is Forgiven
Seeing Those in the Church As Christ Looks Upon Them in Love
Good Morning,
We kind of had a double dose of Obadiah the last couple of months at church, first it was the subject of our June morning sermons, and then the Adult Quarterly of the ARP covered it this past Lord’s Day. In some ways it is the most heartbreaking book of the Bible. Seeing the hate of Edom for Israel and Judah is just sad. Here a wayward brother’s bitterness towards the descendants of Jacob leads his children headlong into destruction. Esau’s progeny will not even listen to the pleas of their covenant Father, because their earthly father taught them from their birth that the God of Abraham’s praise had forsaken them, abandoned them in favor of his younger brother. They refused to hear the words of the prophets to come back unto Him because Esau had poisoned them against their Creator.
As parents sometimes we may not realize how casual words aimed against a brother or a sister can affect how our little ones see others.
No matter how often the prophets come to the Edomites to call them to let go of their anger and resentment, they allow it to burn more and more until it becomes their very identity. They are hardened against the mercy of Jehovah who desires that all might come to repentance and flee from the wrath to come. Those who once knew the family love of God have left it for the confederacy of Assyria and Babylon, the very ones who will bring His vengeance upon them. Such an awful reality.
When Christians turn from loving one another to despising the other’s existence there is nothing more ugly. Back in my younger days there was a song we sang at camp that had the line ‘They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love” and while it’s a bit sappy it also has the pleasant effect of being true. More is expected of believers. In the words of Christ, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”. This testimony is a keen reminder not only about how we should treat fellow followers of Jesus, but also why we should do so. In today’s prayer and worship help we are going to think through more about why this grace is so vital to the life of the church.
Much of the ministry of our Lord is made up of coming alongside Gentiles, Romans, Samaritans, and those ostracized by the religious men of His day. We all know the story of the one who took care of the certain man who was laid upon the side of the road by robbers. Whenever we read this we take turns putting ourselves in the various places of all the individuals involved. There are ways that we fulfill each one for sure, even if the whole story, like nearly all parables, is not about us at all, but about Christ and His work. For the purposes of this Tuesday letter we need to think about the one person not in the story, and that’s the guy asking Jesus the question in the first place. He is said to be a lawyer, which we shouldn’t hold against him, too much.
He is asking about justification and how one is made right before God, and thereby inherit all the blessings of eternal life. Like most Jews of his day the lawyer answers with obedience to the law, doing all the things the commandments require. We already know from earlier in the gospel that no sinful man (which is all of us) can be saved by works. All our good works are filthy rags and not worthy of acceptance by the Father as payment for our own transgressions of the law, let alone enough to do away with Adam’s sin, which we also owe. So when the lawyer hears the whole of the parable and Jesus asks him to answer the question he has no choice but to respond correctly, . . . the one who showed mercy. For that is what the Lord requires of us according to Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”. If this is good for the lawyer to say, how much more so for those who have been rescued from the side of the road and had our place in the inn (the Church) paid for by the Son of Man? Go and do likewise indeed.
The more we understand our own helplessness, and the impossibility of the priest or scribe to help us, that our only hope is in the Samaritan, the more we will see that whatever sin may be in our neighbor our only recourse is to respond in love as our Savior would. Turn the other cheek means what it says. When Paul tells us to not return evil for evil he did not stutter. We damage the body of Christ when we respond with vitriol, regardless of how righteous we might feel in doing so. The Bible teaches us to treat all people well, and how much more so those who carry the grace of Christ as much on their heart as ours? We must see other sheep with the same eyes the Great Shepherd does or we face the unfortunate reality of feeling the other side of the crook.
One of the chapters of the Scriptures that is nearly universally as known almost as much as the Parable of the Great Samaritan is 1 Corinthians 13. Phrases such as, “ . . . And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” fill wedding venues across the country every Saturday of the year. Yet regardless of what this passage is actually talking about (worship) there is good application to made here this morning. Love is always described as sacrifice when it comes to what Jesus has done for us and what we do for one another. The husband loves his wife by laying down his life for her. The Redeemer loves His people by laying down His life for them. The nation of Israel loves Jehovah by denying themselves and resting in His eternal blessing.
In closing, all the same can be said for how we treat one another in the Church. I want you to think right now about someone in your local congregation that you just loathe, and no matter how pious you are, we all know there is a human being who just rubs you the wrong way. What I want you to do right now is repent. Ask God’s forgiveness for the anger that wells up in your heart when you think of them, for we have not so learned Jesus. We must put to death the sin of partiality, and live unto the example of Christ, who said of His persecutors and crucifiers, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We sometimes misunderstand this as Jesus asking God to overlook their ignorance, but that’s not really what He means. It’s better to think more of the fact that they did understand the damage they were doing, and remember, there is a likelihood that someone thought of you during this little exercise.
So ask again of the Lord, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Amen.
No extra reading today.
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church
I think we all needed to read this thank you Pastor Glaser