Love Your Neighbor

  I’ve noticed over the years that after coming to Christ, we often begin to distance ourselves from former friends. We have less time for the hurting and struggling. We’ve found the thing that meets the needs in our lives, but we keep our distance from those who need the very thing we’ve found. I don’t think this separation is always intentional, and sometimes we must separate from our former crowd for a while to start fresh, but it's important to remember that Jesus lived differently.

  One of the common criticisms Jesus faced was that he spent too much time with sinners. How many of us could be accused of spending too much time with the unwelcomed and unappreciated?  It wasn’t that Jesus was unaware of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians: “Bad company corrupts good morals.” No one better understood the importance of Godly influences, spiritual maturity, biblical knowledge, and a robust prayer life than Jesus. However, he understood that these tools were not just given for our personal benefit but for the benefit of the lost world as well. When he sent out the twelve in Matthew 10, he said to them, “Freely you have received; freely give.”

  The Christian life is not about safety and comfort but rather about finding ourselves in a dangerous place of vulnerable compassion. We have been given a commission to go into the world with the message of salvation! Without this information, we are all lost for eternity.  For many of us, the desire to avoid the risk is tempting, but this morning, we will explore what Jesus meant when he said to “love our neighbor as ourselves.”