Still in the throws of Brennan Manning’s, Abba’s Child, I can’t help but be reminded of the Lord’s second greatest commandment, as Manning manages to so eloquently drive it home page after page and yet, for good reason. He knows as Christians, we need to hear it like a mantra, “love one another,” because all too often we tend to forget this and would rather resort to fault finding and judging our brothers and sisters in Christ. Like a broken record, Manning comes back to this time and time again, even exampling himself; where he’s failed to miss this mark, in hopes of opening our eyes to see that we are all on the same level, the playing field is equal, or in other words, not one of us is better than the other, so why then should we not love with impartiality, even as Christ loved us?
In any case, if you’ve forgotten the second greatest commandment it is simply this (and I’ll throw in the first as well, just for good measure):
Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40).
And when Jesus says all He means everything. When He says, “love your neighbor,” He means, “do unto everyone as you would have them do unto you.” When He says, “love God with all that you are,” He means, “love God with complete and utter abandonment – with no thought to yourself.” And yet, who of us lives like this? Can any one of us, save Jesus, walk in such perfection, 100% of the time? Why would Jesus, knowing full well the frailty of our human form; the human condition, wrought with sin, give us a picture of ultimate Christian perfection when He knows full well that none of us can achieve it?
Didn’t Paul say, “run the race to win it?” But what if we fall? What if we fail? Are we suddenly disqualified? Does God rip away our “Child of God” status and suddenly disown us, leaving us orphaned to the world? Never! When Christ gave the example I think He did it to serve as the shining pinnacle, to hold everything we do up to as a sort of measuring stick, because due to our human condition He knew we would need it. He knew we’d fall short, mess up, even at times act completely contrary to our new nature, because even when we become a Child of God we still have our sin nature to contend with, that wars against us, and unfortunately, sometimes wins out.
But thankfully, we are not alone in this. Even Paul, Paul the Apostle, who was one of the greatest apostles, who pretty much launched the gospel, had his own demons to contend with and yet, he lays it out for us with sheer and utter transparency, the war that’s waged within every Christian; between right and wrong, between walking in the flesh and walking in the Spirit:
For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans: 7:19-24)
And to answer Paul’s last question, I would have to say that even as Christ was crucified in the flesh so we must crucify ours. That’s why Manning, who bats a thousand out of a thousand most of the time continues to drive home, paragraph after paragraph, this simple theme; love one another. But if it were so simple why devote entire chapters to it? Because it’s not simple, not by any means, and Manning knows this. He knows that as Christians, we can be some of the most critical and judging people and that if we were to take an honest look at ourselves, it becomes glaringly apparent. Not only in our judgment of the world, but even more so of each other, and it comes from both ends of the spectrum all the way to the middle. Yes, the body of Christ is far from united and would rather nit-pick each other to death. The only way we can love like Christ loved is to crucify the flesh, and I think Manning describes perfectly how Paul contended with this; the sin nature, and it’s found on page 112:
Paul had the audacity to boast that he had the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). His boast was validated by his life. From the moment of his conversion his entire attention was riveted on the risen Christ. Jesus Himself was a force whose momentum was ceaselessly at work before Paul’s eyes (Philippians 3:21). Jesus was a Person whose voice Paul could recognize (2 Corinthians 13:3), who strengthened Paul in moments of weakness (12:9), who enlightened him and consoled him (2 Corinthians 1:4-5). Driven to desperation by the slanderous charges of false apostles, Paul admitted to visions and revelations from the Lord Jesus (2 Corinthians 12:1). The Person of Jesus revealed the meaning of life and death (Colossians 3:3).
In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch said, “You’ll never understand a man ’til you stand in his shoes and look at the world through his eyes.” Paul looked so unflinchingly at himself, others, and the world through the eyes of Jesus that Christ became the ego of the apostle – “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Galations 2:20). Didymus of Alexandria said, “Paul was full of Christ.”
And how many of us could honestly say we are full of Christ? No, instead all too often I think many of us are rather full of ourselves. Thinking so highly of ourselves, in our “better” ways or our “better” thinking, that we thumb our noses down at others. Others who don’t look like we do, talk like we do, or think like we do. Others who disagree, argue, or who act pious, when all the while we point our finger at them we fail to see our own piousness. Haven’t we all been there? I know I have. The good thing is though, we don’t have to stay there. And the good thing is, we have the help of the Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth and righteousness, who gently points out (well, hopefully gently) when we’re not choosing to ask God to help us see things through His eyes, and if we want to be able to love like Christ loved then this has to be our daily prayer, “Lord, give me Your eyes to see,” because when we judge others I believe we’re simply looking at them through the wrong lens. I mean, who am I, who are we, to know what’s in the heart of another? That’s God’s business.
On that note, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Dr. Seuss stories: The Sneetches, and I’ve loved this story since childhood and now as an adult, I think it speaks perfectly as to what so often transpires, not only in the world around us, but unfortunately, where it should not: within the Body of Christ.
This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:22-24).
