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: Our Call to Love Everyone

September 11, 2022

Pastor Tom Grieb continues our "Making a Difference" series based on the visions and values of Saint John.

 

This week we consider Christ’s most challenging word.  He would affirm that we need to love God and love others.  That’s a given.  He puts some flesh on that by challenging us to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.”  We know from experience that doing so is by no means easy. We consider such a challenge and quickly realize that if we are to attain this high calling, we will need some help.  That help comes from the Lord.  We will never be able to scale the heights of the sort of love Jesus talks about without the secure knowledge that God loves us first.  We love because we have first been loved.

 

Jesus challenges us even further.  He calls on us to “be perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect.”  This too is unattainable without the wonderworking power of God in our lives.  The perfection Jesus talks about is tied to love.  It is also tied to the transformative power of God to continually make us over into the image of Christ.  He does this as we allow him to mold and shape us into the sort of people, he wants us to be.  Allowing God to do his thing will bring us to the place where we—even we—will be able to “love everyone.”

Topics: ,
Passage: Matthew 5:43-48

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