The two great commandments, we were reminded every week in church, are to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. God we cannot see, and our neighbor is a pain in the butt.
Only God knows how hard it is for us to keep those commandments. And don’t even try to count the times we fail.
So we pray–to God whom we cannot see, for the power to love persons whom we don’t really want to love. It’s easier, even, to ask God to love them and to bless them, than it is to ask for the grace that would enable us to do that.
It’s a good thing He understands us so well.
That’s why He sent us His Son to be our savior. He knew we couldn’t do it on our own. By works of the flesh no one shall be saved.
Jesus Christ, who did all those things that we are not able to do–He is our righteousness and our salvation.
And our sanctification, too (I Corinthians 1:30). So that, in time, we can at least do better.
Sometimes loving our neighbor is easier than liking him.
We had a missionary speaking today on this very same thing. He spoke of the Samaritan man who stopped to help the robbery victim. This victim was avoided by the religious but taken care of by a despised foreigner.
God does not expect us to fulfill the greatest and second-greatest laws perfectly, but to do a good job at trying to. It is when we let the old man nature have full control and we lash out at others unjustly we are truly out of line. The NT has two words for sin: one is lawlessness and the other is missing the mark. Committed Christians miss the mark but we are not lawless.
Well, we try not to be!