Thursday 7 Mar 2013

Thursday Reading: Leviticus 19:17-18

Key Verse: Leviticus 19:18
18  Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Devotion:
How many times have you looked at the New Testament and thought that Christ was giving us something new to do or to follow? I know that we say that Christ was giving us a new commandment to love our neighbours, but there was nothing new about it. These are the same words that God had given to Moses to guide the Israelites, His chosen people. Christ was giving us the same words, reminding us of what we had forgotten.

Christ came to seek and to save those who are lost. That means He came to encourage those who are lost; something we should be doing as a matter of course as well. He did not walk amongst us and pick out and condemn all the sinners, otherwise He would have been condemning every single one of us. Christ knew that man would continue to forget commandments as we grow. He knows that it is impossible for us to keep all of His commandments because of our sin nature that we inherit and that is why He came to earth. His intent was to give us a way through which we could be made clean again.

The Israelites were told that they had to look out for each other, to care for one another and to support everybody. This did not mean that they got it right first time and loved everyone around them – far from it because God was disappointed in many cases by what they got up to. God was the one seeing inside their hearts and despairing about what He saw; He is still the one who looks inside our hearts and finds so much that goes against His law.

But He is also the one who allowed Christ to come to earth and present a way forward for us whereby we can be saved from the awful debt that we owe. That was the example of love that He gave us and the love that He wants us to show to others, not a love that has limits but one that goes that extra mile when others fade. There will be no way that we could show the same level of love as He showed us, but that is what we have to aim for and it has been that same guidance from the beginning – nothing has changed about God’s continued love for us.

Points to Ponder:
What makes you stop caring for others?

What would you do it God turned His back on you?