#DailyDevotion You Only Have To Do One Thing
January 24th
Read Rom 12:14—13:14
Rom 13:8-10 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. (9) For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (10) Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
1Jn 4:20-21 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. (21) And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Gal 5:14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jas 2:8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.
I see a theme here. If we, we meaning Christians, would just live in love then we wouldn’t need all these do’s and don’ts. The problem is the flesh starts to get the upper hand sometimes in our lives and we start justifying our bad behavior because we want to be selfish and self-centered. The individual laws are there to remind us of our unloving ways, to free us from man-made laws dressed up to be divine ones and to direct our hearts to teach what love is supposed to look like.
The more though we look at Christ and trust in his forgiveness the less we will need the individual laws. All we need to know is to love our neighbor. To love our neighbor, i.e. the person in front of us in need, is to love God in whose image they are made. If you are hurting or harming someone you are not acting in love. We cannot hate people and love God. They are his very likeness even if they do act like “us” most of the time.
But really, as we are Christians we only need to live out our faith. Trusting in the free gift of grace, the earned forgiveness of sins by Jesus Christ, the Spirit himself and Christ Jesus will live out their lives in our life. We will simply do what love is because we will be living in Love. If you find yourself not living in love then either you don’t know the seriousness of your sinfulness or the love God has for you in Christ or perhaps both. But as Christians I think we tend to forget the love God has for us more than the law itself. We need more gospel.
To get this gospel we can read it for ourselves, but the best way is to remember our baptism, hear the Word preached, receive the Sacrament of the Altar and to talk with fellow Christians, sharing our weaknesses with them and lifting them up in their weakness as they lift us up in ours by reminding each other the love God has for us in Christ Jesus.
Heavenly Father, so have the Spirit of your Son Jesus Christ live in us so we may with St. Paul say it is not we who live but Christ Jesus who lives in us that we might love our neighbor as you have loved us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.