The only other choice is to turn toward selfishness, which is a turn toward destruction and away from abundance. There is no other legitimate way to live. All of this serves to reveal who God is and how He always lives. God has taught these specific truths through the commandments, through the clarifying teaching of Christ found in the gospels, and Christ also taught these principles by living them out to perfection among us.
Last week’s battleplan spent a fair amount of time discussing the central biblical teaching that God wants us to love Him with all that we have, and in turn, He wants us to love others with all that we have. Suggested: Review Deuteronomy 6:1-6 Psalm 50 Rather than starting with the command, then drawing an application, Paul starts with the application and then brings us back to the command that undergirds his exhortation.ĭwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.Īnd He will give you the desires of your heart. Giving due service and honor to those in authority over us is an application of the Great Commandment. Let’s take a quick look at this chapter as one of many examples found in Scripture.įollowing an exhortation to give due service and honor to anyone in authority, recognizing that they hold their positions by appointment from God, Paul moves on to a more general exhortation to “owe nothing to anyone except to love one another for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” Paul moves from a specific teaching, that we are to pay what is owed to those who represent the authority of government, to the broader teaching that we are to treat everyone lovingly, which will result in owing nothing. In Romans 13, we find another application of this same commandment, one drawn by the apostle Paul. Suggested: Deuteronomy 6:1-6 Romans 13:1-14įor the last two weeks, our battleplan has drawn applications from the principle often referred to as the “Great Commandment,” the teaching that Jesus revealed to be the fundamental command on which all of Scripture is based, that we are to love God and others with everything we have. Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. Romans 13:10-11 – Love does no wrong to a neighbor therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. They are living out the unity that God has created them for and called them to. From those four glorious lines of poetry, we learn that it was obvious to him that they were made for one another. When he first lays eyes on her, the man launches into a psalm. The man and woman respond to one another as they were created to. In line with the unity which has already been demonstrated within the Godhead during creation, God makes the man and woman in His own image, and He calls them to be as one. First, we do get a picture of how things should be and how things were. In the story of the bible, things have only just begun for the first man and woman, and yet there is already trouble in paradise. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made… And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. The man said,įor this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Genesis 2:22-3:1a – The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. When we persist in acting toward one another in this way, we allow division, and we see a break in the fellowship God would have us enjoy with Himself and with others. In these moments, we are even more likely to act out of our selfish desires, seeking to protect what we believe to be ours by any number of defensive strategies.
Last week, we paid particular attention to our susceptibility to the enemy’s work when we are in conflict with one another. God always calls us toward unity, and the devil is always working against God’s will, seeking a “foothold” so that he can drive us into discord. Unity is a characteristic of the relationships between the Members of the Trinity, and so it is also God’s will that it would be a characteristic of our relationships with Him, and our relationships with each other.
In many of the previous battleplans, we have discussed how the bible emphasizes unity among believers. Ephesians 4:29 – Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.