Gospel and loving our enemies

       As we continue to look at how knowing, grasping, and cherishing the Gospel helps us to live out the life Jesus calls us to live we are going to look at the command to love our enemies.  Matthew 5:43-44, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbors and hate your enemy.'  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."  We are commanded by Jesus to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  That kind of love is not our natural response.  We don't naturally love our enemies.  We don't naturally pray for those who persecute us, but that is what Jesus is calling His followers to do.  

       How does knowing, grasping, and cherishing the Gospel help us to love our enemies?  The Gospel tells us that because of our sin we are God's enemies.  Romans 5:10, "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of Son, much more, now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life."  Do you see what Paul is saying here?  He is talking to Christians and reminding them that before they were reconciled to God they were enemies of God.  That doesn't get talked about a lot today.  It doesn't feel very good to be told that unless we have put our faith in Jesus we are actually enemies of God.  However, that is what the Gospel proclaims. It proclaims that we who were once enemies have been reconciled to God by Jesus and that is GOOD news!  We like to think that before Jesus we were pretty good people, but that is not what the Bible says.  The Bible says that we were enemies with God and anyone who is an enemy of the God of the universe is not a pretty good person.  That is a person who is in desperate need to be restored and reconciled to God and that is exactly what Jesus did when He took the punishment, death, and wrath upon Himself that you and I deserved because we were the ones who were God's enemies, not Jesus.  

       Friend, that is the Gospel and that is indeed God news.  Do you see how this connects to loving our enemies?  The Gospel shows us how the God of the universe was able to love and reconcile us while we were His enemies and that should be our motivation for loving our enemies.  Loving our enemies is doing exactly what God did for us.  The more we realize the desperate state that we were in before Jesus the more willing we will be to offer that same kind of love, grace, and mercy to others that God offered to us.  You don't have the capacity to love this way in and of yourself but that is exactly why God gave us the Holy Spirit so that we would have God's love dwelling within to give to others.  Knowing, grasping, and cherishing the Gospel helps us to love our enemies.

Gospel and living a life of gratitude.

   It is so easy to complain and honestly I am pretty good at it!  Most of us seem to be pretty good at complaining and do not find difficulty in finding multiple things every single day to complain about.  However, as followers of Jesus it is very clear that we are not to complain.  Philippians 2:14 states, "Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world."  Do all things without grumbling.  That is hard, really hard, but it is what we are called to do!  Did you see what this verse says will happen if we do all things without grumbling or disputing?  You will shine as light in the world!  Why?  Because everyone is complaining and grumbling all the time!  

 We are looking at why it is so important to get the Gospel right because when we get the Gospel right it helps us live out the radical life that we are called to live, and living a life without grumbling and arguing is a radical life.  Instead of complaining we have been called to live a life of thankfulness, Ephesians 5:20, "Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. "  So how does the Gospel help us move away from a life of complaining to a life of thankfulness?  

In the Gospel we see grace; incredible, amazing, astounding, incomprehensible, undeserved, unearned, grace!  The Gospel tells us that there is absolutely nothing that we can do to restore our relationship with God.  Nothing.  We can't be good enough, we can't go to church enough, we can't read our bibles enough, we can't pray enough, we can't tell enough people about Jesus.  There is nothing we can do to restore our relationship with God.  We broke the relationship through our sin and we are powerless to restore it.  That is a pretty helpless place to be.  It is our fault that it is broken and we can do nothing to fix it.  Here is where the Gospel enters in.  God did for you what you could not do for yourself.  God restored the broken relationship by sending Jesus to die in your place, in my place!  That is incredible!  Not because you are good, or deserving, or worthy, but because He LOVES YOU!  WOW!  Let that sink in and I guarantee you the more you grasp what God has done for you the more gratitude and thankfulness will come bubbling up from deep within you and overflow into the life that you live day by day.  

So what do we do when we catch ourselves in those complaining moods?  Tell ourselves the Gospel message.  Tell ourselves what Jesus did for us.  Tell ourselves how God restored the relationship that we broke and that we could not fix and don't stop preaching the Gospel to yourself until gratitude and thankfulness begin to take over the complaining and grumbling spirit that you found yourself in.  

Why we have to get the Gospel right

       We HAVE to get the Gospel right.  What is the "Gospel" that we have to get right?  It is the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord!  The Gospel is Jesus in our place.  The Gospel is Jesus taking on Himself the punishment, death, wrath, and consequences that you and I deserved.  The Gospel is God's grace given to us which is wholly underserved.  That is the Gospel that we have to get right!  We have to get it right because it is the only way by which we can be saved.  We have to get it right because it is the only way that others can be saved.  We have to get it right because in coming to grasp, know, and cherish the Gospel more and more we find the power to live rightly!
        After a person puts their faith in Jesus we are called to live a life that is very much counter cultural.  We are called to live a life that goes against the flow of our culture, and if we are honest goes against our natural tendencies and desires.  Think about some of the crazy demands that Scripture calls us to; deny yourself, forgive everyone, LOVE your enemies, store up your treasure in heaven, take care of the least of these, consider others above yourself, love the hard to love, be content in ALL circumstances, live in a place of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.  We could go on for awhile listing the way in which we are called to live as followers of Jesus but that list should be sufficient to remind of us the counter-cultural way we are called to live.  I would argue that our failure to live the way we are called to live is in-part connected with our failure to cheerish, know, and grasp the Gospel.
         Over the course of the next several posts I want to demonstrate how grasping, knowing, and cherishing the Gospel more and more gives us the ability to live out the calling that God has on our lives more and more.  In order to do this we will look specifically at the following in light of the Gospel; forgiveness, loving those who are hard to love, denying self, and living a life of gratitude.  My prayer is that as we journey through these specific examples we will see more clearly than ever before why we need to grasp, cherish, and know the Gospel.