Peanut Christianity

" . . . Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8.

Did you notice who Christ died for? He died for the ungodly, for people who are not like Him, in fact, people who have little interest in being like Him. He is righteous. The people He died for are not. That's you and me. As the verse implies, that is not the normal way things work. People are not inclined to give their lives for unrighteous people, but Christ did. And Paul says that is a demonstration of God's love for us.

If there was ever a time to say, "Oh, you shouldn't have done that," in response to an act of kindness, this would seem to be it. But He did do it. How thankful are we that He did?

However, He does ask something in return. In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus was asked, "which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" The questioner was probably not expecting the answer he got. Jesus repeated Deuteronomy 6:4. He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all thy heart, . . .soul, . . . and mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Upon these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets."

So really, Christ does not ask something in return, He demands something in return. He requires that we love God, and that we love our fellow man. I remember my dad telling of breaking new recruits in as a sergeant in WW2 times. One of his stories was that in regard to cleaning latrines, he would demonstrate by example exactly what they should do, to let them know that he wasn't asking them to do anything that he wouldn't do. Paul says Christ demonstrated His love, so we know what we should do, and what we should be willing to do.

John agrees with Paul, writing in 1 John 4:9-10, " . . . the love of God was revealed in us, [in] that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." And then he adds in vs 19, "We love because He first loved us." So our love for God, and even our fellow man, is a proper and expected reaction to the love of God for us which was demonstrated by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

All this prompts two thoughts to come to mind (my mind, anyway) that I want to propose for further contemplation. The first is a basic definition. By and large, when the word "love" is mentioned in the Bible the appropriate definition is one that comes from John 3:16. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."

In John 3:16 love is defined by what God did, and why He did it. His love had an object, the world, meaning the people of the world. His object had a need, redemption/salvation. God willingly gave a great sacrifice to obtain that need for the object of His love. Love is willingly sacrificing things that are precious to you to obtain things that are necessary for the object of your love. When you are able to do that, then your love fits the Biblical model. This is the love that God has for us, and it is the love that He wants us to have for Him and our fellow man.

Secondly, I wonder if 'love' is the only command that God really has for us? Hold on a minute. I don't mean "just have a warm fuzzy feeling toward everyone and accept them as they are. Let them be what they want to be, what makes them feel good about themselves and don't be judgemental." I have never gotten such a concept as that from anything I have ever read in the Bible. I mean the definition from the previous paragraph.

"Trying to Walk" has spent a good bit of time on the topics of "it's not about you", and "elevating the spiritual and subduing the physical." Each had it's own article and last week the two concepts were combined in a single article. Maybe you think that's too much. I'm not sure too much time can be spent trying to incorporate those concepts into living our everyday Christian lives.

If you always elevate the spiritual and you always subdue the physical in all your activities and decisions throughout life, how could you not be pleasing to God? How could you fail to be fit for Heaven? How could you not be a blessing to those with whom you come in contact? If you always behave and keep in mind that everything is not all about you, but that God, His kingdom, and others are to be considered over you in your thinking - same questions.

Either one of those seems to be all by itself a sure-fire path to Heaven. But neither one of them is. This is because both of them, in and of themselves, are lacking something of great importance. In and of themselves, and that is what we are talking about here, they lack love. Does that matter? Read 1 Cor. 13:1-3. Yes, it matters. Without love in the picture there is nothing you will ever do that will be worth a (proverbial) "hill of beans."

Now consider that always in every choice and in every situation you act out of love. You do what you do as a person who is willing (that is very important - without that there is no love) to sacrifice something precious to you to obtain for others what they need, and for God what He wants. Same questions.

Paul told in Romans 8:8-9 how love as a commandment by itself could replace all of the 10 commandments. If we just had hearts filled with love we would keep every commandment. In verse 10 Paul says, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law." Moreover, as noted above, In Matt. 22:40, Jesus said the entirety of the law and the prophets was anchored in love for God and love for fellow man.

So why are there so many commandments if love is the only one we need? Because we don't know how to love and we don't know how to worship, or properly respect God. (To be meaningful, worshipping God and respecting God must flow from loving God.) So we have all these other commands telling us this is how people who love their fellow man act toward them; this is how people who love their God and want to please Him will conduct themselves. So in the end we haven't escaped from keeping any commandments we ever had. We just see them as the path of love to God and our fellow man.

I have thought of this as the peanut approach to Christianity. Peanuts consist of two nuts and a shell. Elevating the spirit and subduing the flesh is one of the peanuts. Understanding that it's not all about us is the other peanut. But peanuts are covered by a shell. That shell is what enables the peanuts to be what they were meant to be. Love is the peanut shell.