 |
| Daniel J. Musokwa |
All the previous installment in this series can be accessed by clicking on these links:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7
A NEW
COMMANDMENT – Part II
Mat 22:35 And one of them, a LAWYER,
questioned Him, testing Him, and saying,
Mat 22:36 Teacher, which is the great
commandment IN THE
LAW?
Mat 22:37 And Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with
all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Deut.
6:5)
Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
Mat 22:39 And the second is like it: "You shall love your
neighbour as
yourself." (Lev. 19:18)
Mat 22:40 On
these two commandments all the
Law and the Prophets HANG.
Here the
Pharisees were all over Jesus again, testing Him with
everything they knew; which
was the Law of Moses. They wanted to know, of the 613 laws of
Moses, which one
was the greatest and most important. Jesus not only
told them which ones
were the greatest laws, He also established the same as the
fulfillment of the
rest! Absolutely gorgeous! In answering their conceited
question, Jesus quoted
two laws of love from Moses and said:
§
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your mind.” (Deut. 6:5) – The FIRST and
GREATEST commandment
§ “You
shall love
your neighbour
as yourself.” (Lev.
19:18)
– The SECOND commandment
These are
the twin laws of love, the first gives us a vertical
relationship with God and
the second gives us a horizontal relationship with one
another. Then Jesus says “on these
TWO commandments all the Law and the Prophets
hang or terminate.” This means that now these are the
only commandments
which heaven recognizes and exerts upon this new group of
testamental
recipients, the church. In other words Jesus was saying “on these two
commandments is fulfilled everything between
Genesis and Malachi.”
We will see this more clearly in the near future.
So the Lord
was establishing LOVE as the GREATEST and ONLY commandment
that every believer
should endeavour to fulfil and learn heartily! Everything else
is secondary to
love. I tell you friends, we need to get this thing right! We
must teach our
people the lost act of loving others. Love is the most
difficult thing for a
human heart to learn I tell you. Most of the times we confuse
love with admiration,
lust, desire, obsession, infatuation
and liking
someone. But the “love” that Jesus Christ was talking about is
in a class of
its own, it is the AGAPE kind of love. Please understand that
the Greek word
“agape” wasn’t known to most Greeks of the New Testament first
century times
because it had just been coined specifically to express the
God kind of love.
It never existed before. And even in the Greek, it couldn’t be
used for any
other thing other than to describe God’s love or the love that
God’s people
were supposed to have. The only words the Greeks used to
describe love were “eros”,
“storge” and “Philia.” But
the word agape is
synonymous with
sacrifice, pain, and persevering, longsuffering, selflessness
and self-denial;
it is where we get the English word “agony.”
“For
God so ‘agonized’
over the world that He gave His only begotten son (sacrifice) that whosoever
believes in Him
should not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
This kind
of love agonizes (not only in sympathy, but also empathy) over
those who are
still in sin, over those who are sick and dying, over those
who are unkind and
unloving, over those who are “unlovable”, and over all kinds
of God’s lost sons
and daughters. It is a ‘violent’ kind of love that says “you cannot make me hate you.” It is stubborn
love! Most of the
times when a man tells a woman “I love you”, they are
subconsciously thinking
of the “eros” kind of love – not “Agape!” That’s not bad in
itself because a
husband must “agape” his wife, but he must also “eros” her
because she is also
soul and flesh. However, the world has thrown the word ‘love’
around so much
that it has, again, lost its ‘agape’ flavour and only remains
with the ‘eros’
part. Few non-Christians are capable of ‘agape’, but there are
few who are
capable of it from the heart with no ulterior motives.
 |
| Source: Google Images |
However,
most Christians are also incapable of ‘agape’; when they talk
about love – it
is only limited to “storge” and “philia.” This is why
Christians think it is
easy to ‘love’. But to love with the ‘agape’ kind of love has
to be a conscious
decision that one makes because it involves a lot of pain and
sacrifice. Here
one loves even when rejected and abused. Whoever
can love thus, has known God – even though he/she might not
be a Christian. Why?
Because God is Agape!
I
tell you the truth, whoever can
perfectly exhibit the agape kind of love, the same has known
God and is already
saved and known by God – even if they might not be polished
“Christians” as we
know Christianity today! (Romans 2:12)
I know by
making that kind of a statement I have already alienated those
of you who think
you have a franchise on or an exclusive right to the love and
grace of God. But
the Scriptures teach that very explicitly as we will see here:
1Jn 2:3 We know that we have
come to know him if we obey his commands.
And what
are His commands?
John 15:12 My command is this: Love
each other as I have loved you.
John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life
for his friends (sacrifice).
John 15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
And verse
17…
Jn 15:17 These things I command
you, that you love
one another.
We saw how
Jesus established LOVE as the greatest and only law of the New
Testament era.
He calls it “My
command”; so this is the “Law of Jesus” (John 15:12), the
mediator of the New Covenant (Heb 9:15) as opposed to the “Law
of
Moses” (Luke 2:22),
the
mediator of the Old Covenant. So how do
we know (Greek: ginosko)
God? By
obeying or executing His agape command, full stop! By
this we are not just
acquainted with God, but rather we know (ginosko)
God in that we become ONE SPIRIT with Him in ‘marital’
spiritual knowledge.
When we agape others and the Father, we become Jesus Christ
who loved people
and the Father. He is Agape! By showing agape we are literally
displaying our
own deity in Christ only. Agape isn’t just a godly attribute,
it is God of very
God! Whoever agapes knows God!
“Brother
Daniel, are you saying that even a
heathen who has never heard of Jesus Christ, if he agapes
from his heart – he
has truly known God and has been born of God?”
1Jn 4:7 Beloved, let us love
one another, for love is of God, and EVERYONE who
loves has been born of God, and knows God.
“But whatever
happened to confessing Christ
with your mouth?”
Rom 10:9 Because if you confess
the Lord Jesus, and believe
in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead,
you shall be saved.
Yes, that
is true; very true in fact. But have you ever asked yourself,
what about the
blind, deaf and mute? Has their fate been sealed? Do they go
straight to hell
since they cannot confess or believe
in the One of whom
they have never heard or seen!
But agape is a decision
and a disposition of the heart of man. What if they can agape
sacrificially
from the heart even if they’ve never responded to an altar
call? Is God ‘faithful
and just’ to accept 1 John 4:7
on their behalf. If you can agape, then you will never break
any of the Old
Testament Ten Commandments because in order to break the Ten
Commandments, you
first have to break the twin laws of the New Testament, the
“Laws of Christ,”
the Law of Agape. Once you’ve heard about Jesus then you are
responsible, but
those who have never heard about Him, yet they love truly and
sacrificially...
believe me... they have known (experienced and expressed) God!
Hard pill to
swallow... but there it is.
But let us
talk some more about believers and agape! I totally believe
that the most
paramount teaching and revelation of the Christian or of the
Christ-life is
that of AGAPE. When people come to Christ, we should spend a
lot of time and
energy teaching them about agape specifically, not just
‘love’. Things like
being compassionate, sacrificial, merciful, kind, charitable
etc. are the core
of what distinguishes Christianity against other philosophies
and religions of
the world. Agape is the only sign of true discipleship. Agape
is Christianity!
There has never been and neither will there ever be any kind
of Christianity
apart from agape. If you say you are a mature Christian and
are filled with the
Holy Spirit of Agape, and have been for a while, but you are
without love and
full of bitterness; you are a liar and the Truth is not in
you. I hope you
don’t mind me calling a spade a spade here.
God is
renovating us, all of us and it is time to face some bitter
quinine medicine,
it does the soul good! This is that time to turn back to the
‘kindergarten’
ABC’s of the gospel just like this:
§
God
is love
§
God
loves children (that’s you and me)
§
God’s
children are loving
§
Without
love we cannot be Agape’s children
§
Without
agape our ‘gifts’ are NOTHING.
I know it
sounds very elementary and kindergarten but without making
peace with this
kindergarten curriculum we will never amount to anything in
the spirit. We need
to be re-acquainted with the Cross and with the gospel all
over again, and this
time, not with hyped-up Pentecostal evangelistic gimmickry,
but with sombre
reality of these seemingly trivial truths that are truly and
exceedingly
sublime. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!! CHRISTIANITY
AND LOVE ARE ONE AND THE SAME! To remind ourselves if
someone asks us “are
you a Christian?” We should say, “yes, my love attests
to it.”
§
It
is possible to have agape and not be a “Christian”
§
It
is possible to have agape and be godly
§
It
is impossible to be a Christian and not have agape
§
It
is impossible to be godly and not have agape
Check this
out
1Jn 2:3 We know that we have
come to know him if we obey his commands.
1Jn 2:4 The
man who says, "I know him," but does NOT do what he commands
is a
LIAR, and the truth is NOT in him.
1Jn 2:5-6 But
if anyone obeys his word, God's
love is truly made complete in him. This is how we
know we are in him: Whoever claims
to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
What is His
command again? It is AGAPE! So if you say that you know God,
and you have no
agape in you, the Holy Spirit whom you claim to be filled with
calls you a
LIAR! He even adds that the Truth is not in you, if you have
no love. But if
anyone loves “God’s agape is truly made complete or perfect in
him.” This means
that the essence of God’s deity (God is Agape) is perfected in
you such that
you become the veritable essence of the Almighty God. And look
again at the
Scripture above highlighted in red; He says “This is how we know we are
in Him: Whoever
CLAIMS to live in Him MUST walk as Jesus did!”
Friends this
is incredibly enormous! Whoever CLAIMS that he is a Christian
MUST (this is NOT
optional) walk as Jesus did! Wow!! How exactly did Jesus walk?
He walked in
love and mercy and compassion. He was Agape personified. If
you claim to how
Him, then where is your agape?
In fact the
only sign that we are His disciples is if we love one another
(John 13:35),
but also the only way to
test ourselves (every great circuitry has a short-circuit
tester) IF WE ARE
CHRISTIANS at all and have passed FROM DEATH TO LIFE is in:
1Jn 3:14 We know that we
have passed from death to life, BECAUSE we
love our brothers. Anyone who does
not love remains in death (sin: wages of sin is death).
1Jn 3:15 Anyone who hates (opposite of agape)
his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has
eternal life in him.
1Jn 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his
life for us. And we ought to lay down
our lives for our brothers.
Summary: No
love = Not saved!
 |
| Source: Google Images |
I try to
convey the weight of these wonderful Scriptures about the
basics of
Christianity in as blunt a manner as possible so as to not
take away their drive
and oomph at the bid to be politically correct and
‘considerate’. The Word
affords none of us that luxury. If you are thinking ill or
maliciously about
another brother, then you are a murderer and “no murderer has
eternal life in
him”, he is NOT saved at all, gifts and all! If your brother
has sinned against
you, tell him! If he is spreading heresies, for God’s sake,
confront him with
the truth the way Paul did Peter. Anything else is gossip, and
gossip is the
same as character assassination; in other words, MURDER! I
think now we are
beginning to see that Christlikeness is a bit more than
singing and raising our
hands. We sing songs like “I wanna be like You”, do we really?
He can’t make
you; you’ve got to “pursue agape” violently (1 Cor 14:1), it
is an act of the
will and when you are at it, the Helper will help you. But
first, “be ye
transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Your mind (soul)
needs to be renewed
first. How is it renewed? It is renewed by consciously
practicing agape,
hospitality, charity, mercy-fulness, compassion and the like.
We’ve
talked so much about “practicing the presence of God” until it
has become just
another Christian fad. But practicing the presence of God is
practicing love;
everything else is an addition to this. You cannot out-do
agape. Everything we
do in worship and in walking with Jehovah should stem out of
agape, because
Jehovah is Agape! Within agape there are the dual cords of
“loving God” and
“loving your neighbour.”
Agape is
the altar upon which the offering is sanctified. So agape is
greater than any
financial or material offering! It is not the size of your
offering which
pleases God; it is the agape-altar of your heart upon which
the offering has
been sanctified. One gives the little he has from a heart with
big agape, and
the other gives much from a heart with very little agape. In
this case the offering
avails nothing, but the contents of the heart are everything.
I tell you the
truth, some people would be
better off not giving an offering until they have learned to
love first.
Otherwise their offering is like money thrown into a pit
latrine; a complete
waste.
--
Daniel J. Musokwa,
General Overseer,
New Testament Ministries - TZ,
P.O. Box 2590,
Mbeya,
Tanzania
0715-905001 (SMS only)
No comments:
Post a Comment