God’s mercy extends to all; Loving our neighbour

19 Nov 2023

(A) God’s Mercy Extends to All

We have been considering the prayer of the Lord Jesus: ‘Sanctify them in the truth…. (John 17:17) and “I will make you perfect” as an elaboration of this prayer.
In these sharings, we have noted that the Triune God desires holiness and purity in our lives; we saw also how this desire is for own sakes and for our own interests, for only the pure shall see God and only the pure and holy can stand in His presence and share His glory (in the new heaven and new earth).

We are aware that the ten commandments can be encapsulated in the commands ‘to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds’ and ‘to love our neighbour as ourselves’. Holiness and purity of heart necessarily involve keeping these commands; but what is not so obvious is to realise that loving our neighbour includes loving our enemies as well as friends.

Loving our enemies is often accepted theoretically, but we need to also realise that the Lord Jesus taught this:

“But to you who are listening I say: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you….. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most high, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:27-28; 32-36 TNIV)

This is a teaching that is ‘hard to swallow’ – imagining loving our enemies and doing good to them.
What the Lord Jesus was saying is effectively the following: Whenever we feel hostile to anybody or any group of people, however badly they may have behaved toward you, stop and remember, and say to ourselves: ‘God made them (in HIs own image), as God made me. If they turn to Christ, they will be forgiven, as I am forgiven. It is not my part to cherish hostility toward them when my Saviour-God has shown such wonderful redemptive love toward sinful me.’

In other words, loving our neighbour includes loving enemies as well as friends. It takes all of life for some of us to learn it. Some perhaps never do. Some perhaps are slow to realise their need to learn it; but we all must learn it, for this is the teaching of our Lord Jesus, and it is part and parcel of being holy, pure, and ‘perfect’ for our future ‘home, and inheritance, and glory’.

The story of Jonah in the Old Testament often focused on the fact that Jonah was notoriously a disobedient prophet. But perhaps, we miss the point that when Jonah proclaimed judgment against Nineveh, they called for a fast and.put on sackcloth (Jonah3:5). The king himself called for repentance, and God did relent. Jonah himself was disgusted that Nineveh was not destroyed, for he knew that they would be the ones to invade Israel subsequently. Jonah missed completely the point that God is supremely glorified when He shows Himself merciful – even to those who have acted as His enemies.
The fact is: God’s mercy extends to all, for all were created in His image, and each one has the potential to be saved if he or she repents and receives His mercy by faith.

The Lord Jesus on His cross was praying,

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). To be merciful to enemies and wrongdoers, and to desirer and seek their welfare, is in truth central to the real Christian life.
In Acts 7:59-60, we read: “While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he fell on on his knees and cried out, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said that, he fell asleep.”

We are here considering loving our enemies. But what about loving our brethren? Is it not true that even in the church, Christians find it hard to love one another. We hold grudges and we desire to hurt those who have hurt us in the same manner. If this is not so possible, i.e. loving our brethren in loving our neighbour, surely, loving our enemies is almost impossible.

But God intends to make it a reality in the lives of His people – for His people shall be like Him and this includes being merciful to all, including those who have wronged us!!

Is it not true that much of the angst and struggles in our lives and hearts have to do with ‘hate’ and seeking to give as much as we receive, in terms of hostility? This ought not to be for children of the merciful and loving God.

Jesus prays for sanctification for His people; He prays that His people will be perfected in holiness and purity, He prays that they would love God with all their hearts, and souls, and minds, and their neighbours as themselves – in fact He commands it!

(B) Reflections on Loving God and Neighbour

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship HIm than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls…But God wills our good and our good is to love Him (with the responsive love proper to creatures) and to love Him we must know HIm: and if we know HIm, we shall in fact fall on our faces. If we do not, that only shows that what we are trying to love is not God – though it may be the nearest approximation to God which our thought and fantasy may attain. Yet the call is not only to prostration and awe; it is a reflection of the Divine life, a creaturely participation in the Divine attributes which is far beyond our present desires. We are bidden to ‘put on Christ’, to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment by too much love, not too little.” (C.S. Lewis – from the problem of pain).

Here, Lewis learned, from the pain of losing his wife, that God is God, not what we think He ought to be, and not what we desire Him to be. He concludes, after much struggles with pain, that this pain is part and parcel of God’s love for him and also part of the process of him truly knowing God and loving Him – the One and only – not what he thinks He should be or what he desires Him to be.

He also found that God intends to give him what he needs, not what he wants. And that requires him to ‘worship’ Him, and to acknowledge that He desires to make him a participant in the divine attributes, to ‘put on Christ’ and to become like God.

But most of all, what God intends to do for us, and what He is doing in us, is a manifestation and reflection of His LOVE – from Lewis’ perspective – it is embarrassingly ‘MORE LOVE’ than he can ever imagine or ever deserve – not less love, which is often our complaint when we are in the throes of pain and suffering. God is indeed LOVE and He loves us even when we are unlovable; and He intends to make us to become like Him, by exercising His love to us in giving us what we need rather than what we desire, for true love desires the welfare of the one loved, and true love perseveres and endures despite the complaints and misunderstandings of the one loved!