So I’m writing more devotionals for my church to help people in small groups have conversations that make you change, rather than just feel smart or feel guilty.

This week’s was about loving your actual neighbor. Although I wrote the devotional and could type our some pretty thought-provoking question… I suck at loving my neighbor. But the writing, the message, and the discussion all have my gears spinning.

The momentum is going and I don’t want it stop.
I can’t let it stop.
I have no right to withhold love from my neighbor.

Because Jesus didn’t withhold His love from me.
He saved my life, and thus I am in debt to Him and anything He tells me to do with that life.

And thus, I am in perpetual debt of love to my neighbor. Whether the world or secular justice say I’m obligated to love someone or not, the law of God says I’m obligated to lay down my life for even the most wretched or tiny or “non-useful” person.

I’m glad God loved me for more than just being useful or I’d be afraid daily of getting struck down. Because days like the one today, let’s just say I just plain was not useful to society okay. It was not a useful day up in here.

Anyways. This message got me thinking. About how we respond to commands.

Commands. Ugh. What a religious word, eh?

No. What’s religious is the people who came up to Jesus and asked,

“And who is my neighbor?”

What’s not religious is that Jesus was like, “Everybody. Even the people you hate, who are dangerous to your children, who don’t give a crap about God, or who maybe do but you just don’t bother to give them a chance.” (aka the Good Samaritan story. This is the Meg paraphrase okay.)

You see, we all have this deep need to be justified.

Justified? What do you mean, Meg?

Justified. As in,

We all have this inherent need
to be able
to live with ourselves.

Not necessarily live with all our decisions. But rather, what kind of people we generally see ourselves as.

If anything or anybody threatens our good view of ourselves, how do we seek justification?

we have 4 options.

One. We lower the standard.

This is what the Pharisees did. (In case you don’t know I’m alluding to Luke 10:29-37 and the Pharisees are comparable to the “Christian” today who gets the most media attention and who has probably scarred you personally in some way. I share my Christian label with Christ, not these people.)

Nobody’s perfect. Nobody can love everybody. So instead of including everybody as our neighbor, we only include certain people.

And these certain people are, of course, the people we already love. Because if we’re already loving all the right people? We can live with ourselves.

You might only love people who are a lot like you. You might only love people whom you find useful. Or easy to get along with. Or who have the same skin color as you. Or the same native language as you. Or the same religion as you. Or the same sexual orientation as you.

Well, good for you. You have just as much love as a Pharisee.

Two. We try harder… and still fail.

Okay, so maybe you’re not lowering the standard. Maybe you still believe you have an obligation to your neighbor.

Every. Single. Neighbor.

But now, you’re still gonna pretend it’s even possible to love your neighbor to the extent Jesus called us to?

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Okay, yeah. It doesn’t hurt to try. But honey, you’re gonna kill yourself trying. It’s not gonna be pretty. As someone who went to college with a ton of social work students, I’ve seen the symptoms of this option number two. You can stay up 24 hours a day all your life helping people and you still won’t hit everyone.

You’re setting yourself up for failure.

So if I can’t lower the standard, but I also can’t reach the standard…

What’s left?
How do I live with myself?

Congratulations.
Like 80% of all humans never get to this point.
They all get trapped in one or two.

Three. We give up — bitter, angry and hurt.

Okay, maybe this one isn’t actually so noble. We’re at like 95% now. Even the most compassionate people often land here. After you work in social services for 3 years and see too many kids in situations so disturbing you don’t think anyone could understand even if you were allowed to breach confidentiality. Or after you work in a police office and see too many of your acquaintances doing horrible things with their lives and to the people around them. Or after the second (and third) spouse doesn’t work out, after you gave every second chance and hoped for the very best in them. Or after you work all your life trying to please God and these horrible things start happening and they get just so bitter at God, because,

He promised.

That
If you just try hard enough that you’ll be rewarded.

(Or is that the American Dream?)

These pains are legitimate. And they are the result of some beautiful, beautiful, futile intentions from number two.

And they lead you back to number one, and all the people with all the broken promises, including
and
especially
God,
become the very first people of whom you say, “I don’t have to love them. They are scum, and the only way I can live with myself, the only way I can keep them accountable for their evil,
is to show off
the scars they gave me
for the rest of my life.”

The greatest good is no longer to love. No. You make it your aim to see to it that everyone who is evil is ripped to shreds.

And once they are,

you can live with yourself.

These pains are legitimate. I see your scars, and they are real. As I friend, I will mourn with you over your pain. As a friend, I will hate the evil that you hate. As a friend, I will long for the ideals that your inner child still holds onto under the callouses caused by all the friction.

And as a friend, I can’t let you stay here. Not for too long.

Number four. We give up our pride.

No. This is a very different kind of giving up. This is an emptying. There is no bitterness here, because this is the point at which you say,

I am no different.

I am no different from the Pharisee
who strolled right past the dying man on the street.

I am no better, because just as that Pharisee despised that man,
I despise that Pharisee…

…and neither of us are justified.

He should not be able to live with himself.

But if I really look at myself and my own apathy and bitterness
and lowering of standards
and twisting of words to fit my current life patterns
and striving and failing to the point of “screw it why bother”

… I can’t live with myself, either.

This is where you say, “Frankly, there is nothing good left in me.
And I’m not entirely sure there ever was.”

This is where you say,  “Frankly, I hate to admit it, but I have no grounds on which to decide which people matter
and which people
don’t.”

This is where you say, “Frankly, even if I had infinite capacity to care for people in my world,
I wouldn’t.
Because I don’t even care for people
I do have the capacity
to care for.”

This is where you say, “Frankly, I can’t live with myself.
I have become so, so bitter.
My scars haven’t healed; they have gotten infected.
Their pain is spreading, their control over my life is spreading,
and the anger I feel inside at everyone who hurt me —
I’m projecting it onto every good social cause I can find…

so I can live with myself.”

You talk the talk, you strive to keep evil in line “out there”…
and yet, you can barely confront the evil
metastasizing
in your own
heart.

 

 

Sometimes it takes being dead on the street for a Samaritan to show up.

Sometimes it takes getting to number four
for Jesus to show up.

(Maybe this is what Jesus means when He says we have to die in order to live.)

 

Jesus didn’t stutter when He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” And He didn’t name a single individual or demographic the Pharisees were allowed not to love.

Jesus set the bar at perfection. To love 100% of everybody. Do we fail at this? Freaking yes. But instead of pretending we love everybody 100% perfectly as people are dying in our streets, how about let’s just like admit that we
don’t.

Jesus says, I didn’t come to heal the healthy, but the sick.

If all we do is just tell everyone (including ourselves) that we’re good people and we’re fine just as we are… our condition (whether diagnosed yet or not) will never improve.

The infections will spread under our cover-up and pain meds. And when the day of truth comes? We’ll be far sicker people than we ever imagined.

Sin is the number one cause of death…
and it’s preventable.

Guess what? Jesus is the master of curing preventable diseases.

Deny cancer and people around you will be happy with you
and you will feel strong. How dare someone tell you you’re “sick.” You are healthy.

Catch cancer early and you will live.

Jesus is the master of curing preventable diseases.

Most times, when you touch a sick person, you get sick. But when Jesus touches you, you get well.

 

 

If you’re a man with leprosy and Jesus tells you you’re sick,
you don’t spit in his face and say “How dare you call me sick!
How insulting!”

 

When Jesus asks,

“Do you want to be well?” (John 5:6)

There will be no healing for you
if you say,

“I’m already good enough.”

 

 

The Pharisees were “good enough.”

The man dying in the street was fine without you,
because he was already a
good, good,
healthy, healthy, person.

(He didn’t need you to share the gospel with him… he was fine. Let that sink in, Christian.)

“Everything’s fine. Just let people be.”

As a friend, Jesus gave you four options, but you will find that, out of love, He won’t leave you in any of the first three.

He won’t let you remain
“fine.”

He won’t stop until you are
well.

He would die to see you live…
but to live,
you must first see
that apart from His justification,
you are dead.

Jesus was the only man who ever lived a perfect life. Granted, He had supernatural power behind Him. But that’s what it took.

He lived a perfect life.
He loved perfectly.
He neither lowered the standard (number one)
nor fell short of it (number two)
and suffered for doing good, even unto death (number three).
He took the suffering we deserved.
He took up our infirmities.
Anything God hated in us —
Any wrath God may have had toward us —
Jesus took it,
Jesus EXHAUSTED it,
so that after all judgement toward us
had instead been laid on Jesus,
God had nothing left
but love
for us.

 

 

 

 

Jesus is the only man in history who was ever justified by His actions.

 

 

 

You know what you’re justified by?

Jesus.

 

 

 

Not your good works that you hope will outweigh your bad.

Not your arbitrary human standards of ethics (laws).

Not your ability to live with ourselves.

Just. Jesus.

 

 

 

 

What then? Are we any better? Not at all! For we have previously charged that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin, as it is written:

Now we know that whatever the law says speaks to those who are subject to the law, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God’s judgment. For no one will be justified in His sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.

But now, apart from the law, God’s righteousness has been revealed—attested by the Law and the Prophets —that is, God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe, since there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.God presented Him as a propitiation through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.God presented Him to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.

Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By one of works? No, on the contrary, by a law of faith. For we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God for Jews only? Is He not also for Gentiles? Yes, for Gentiles too, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then cancel the law through faith? Absolutely not! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Paul of Tarsus, Romans 3:9-31