DAILY DEVOTION No. 15

Luke 6:27-31 "But I say to you who give ear to me, Have love for those who are against you, do good to those who have hate for you,  Give blessing to those who give you curses, say prayers for those who are cruel to you. If a man gives you a blow on one side of your face, then let the other side be turned to him; from him who takes away your coat, do not keep back your robe. Give to everyone who comes with a request, and if a man takes away your property, make no attempt to get it back again.  Do to others as you would have them do to you."

Do you find it easy to live the sermon on the mount? To love your enemies is not a natural thing to do. To fall in love is easy. To love family and your closest friends is easy. Jesus said “Even the pagans do this.” To love your enemies is another thing though. You cannot just ignore those you dislike and hope they’ll go away. God’s way is based on the extra thing - going the extra mile.

Jesus described the natural way of behaviour and dismissed it by saying “ What special grace is there in that?” Agape love means..... No matter what a person does I will never allow myself to desire anything but the very best for them, and I will deliberately and wilfully go out of my way to be good and to be kind to them. To take it a step further, it is saying that no matter what they do to me, if they insult, ill-treat, or injure me, I will seek nothing but the best for them.

Falling in love happens.... The love we have for friends and family we can’t help.... But the love we have towards our enemies, is a matter of the heart. It is an act of our will, it is something that by the grace of God, we will ourselves to do. God sends rain on the just and the unjust. God is kind to the man who brings Him joy, and just as kind to the man who breaks His heart. This is the love that he has asked us to have. BUT THIS IS SO HARD.

And what about the ones at church - our friends. Those who say they are our friends and yet behind our backs they run us down to others or do things that will hurt us. How do we treat them? Do we forgive them? In Psalm 55:12 -14 we see that David struggled with the same problem - "For it was not my hater who said evil of me; that would have been no grief to me; it was not one outside the number of my friends who made himself strong against me, or I would have kept myself from him in a secret place;  But it was you, my equal, my guide, my well-loved friend. We who held sweet intercourse together. To the house of God we walked amid the throng."

Paul struggled with the same things we do. He said in Rom 7:18 “ For I know that in me dwells...no good thing.” Then in Rom 7:24 we read, “For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help!  I realise that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it;  I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me, and get the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.” (The Message.)

WHAT IS THE ANSWER TO THIS PROBLEM WE ALL FACE? You and I must be careful of thinking of Jesus as only a teacher. If Jesus Christ is only a teacher, then all he can do is frustrate us by setting a standard we cannot reach. Why present us with an ideal that we cannot possibly come close to attaining? We would be happier if we never knew it. What good is there in telling us what we can never be? In other words, like being pure in heart......when I know that my heart is wicked and despitefully evil, or to go the extra mile...when I know that I’m lazy, and struggle with the first mile.  

I must come to know Jesus before His teachings can mean anything to me. Other than high ideals that lead to despair, when I am born again by the Spirit of God, I realise that He came not only to teach, but make me what He teaches I should be. The key to living the life is found at the beginning of the Sermon of the Mount - Matt 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This is the first principle in the Kingdom of God - having a sense of absolute futility where we admit, “Lord I cannot even begin to do this.”  Where we say, "God I have no strength, no power, no will to do what you’ve asked." I come to You with nothing but a broken and contrite heart asking You to change me and make me someone new.

When we come to the Lord in this manner, there is an impartation of Christ's qualities to me, and it is His patience, His love, His holiness, His faith, His purity and Godliness, that is shown through my life when I have received His Spirit. This impartation is not imitation of Jesus, but means Jesus qualities are available to me.

Col 1:27 says “Christ in me the hope of glory.” When Christ is in us, we are able to live the sermon on the mount. Slowly day by day, we are changed from glory to glory. Christ living in me is the hope that Jesus is revealed to a lost world. That’s what we are here for, that the relationship we have with God is shown through us to others. Will you come to Him with a broken and contrite heart and let Him live His glory out through your life?