Let's start with the most obvious.
"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 22:37-40).There! Simple as that. You keep these two, simple laws and you've kept all of them. But do we even have the slightest clue how to "love the Lord your God with all your heart"?
How about this one? "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). Oh, good. Another simple command. Nothing less than absolute perfection. Easy, right?
Now, we can try to mitigate it. "Well, He didn't actually mean perfect. He meant 'complete'" or "He meant that we would be made perfect" or some such. But it seems to me that the more you look at the commands of Scripture, the more you see a series of impossible commands.
It's not that they're impossible in and of themselves. That's not what I mean. I just mean "impossible" in the sense that none of us ever fully obey them. We suffer from what Paul calls "the flesh", "sin that dwells within me" (Rom. 7:14, 20). Being imperfect beings, we will obey imperfectly despite all of our best intentions.
So what's the point? The point is that we don't spend time looking at the impossible. Instead, we reach for the "impossible". Recently I wrote a post entitled "I Love My Wife". In that post I spoke of a love for my wife that exceeds human capabilities. That love is one of those "impossible commands": "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church" (Eph. 5:25). One easy response is "I do not think it is possible for a human being to be able to unconditionally love another person." And I'd have to confess I think this is true.
However, are we going to look at what is possible, or are we going to reach for the impossible? Are we going to conclude, "It can't be done" and so not try, or are we going to boast in our weakness so the power of Christ can dwell in us (2 Cor. 12:9)?
It is true, I think. We have a lot of commands that are indeed outside of our human capacity to obey. That doesn't absolve us from obeying them or at least trying. And when you find that you have, if only on occasion, actually done the impossible, oh, what joy that brings the soul ... knowing you have been in the presence of the one with Whom all things are possible.
2 comments:
I often think when Jesus commands the impossible that He's also trying to show how very impossible it is to be like Him...to show how huge the gap is...to help us to understand the sin that has separated us and God. I agree that it's not impossible to obey God's Laws THROUGH Christ, but if we actually could completely, we would not cling to the cross, and our pride would be abundant.
I have been considering this very subject lately. The first part about loving God with all your heart is what I struggle with the most.
I have been through some pretty extreme health issues with one of my children. He is only two year old and I have seen him suffer and have nearly lost him once. I have lost two grandparents to cancer during this same two year period. I love all three of the people with all my heart. I love other people with all my heart as well, but I use these three as an example for my point.
I can look back at old photos of my Papa or my Mingma and get could up in emotions feel hurt from the loss. This is a pain of grief that many of use share at some point in our life. I remember very clearly the pain I felt when the doctor stepped out to tell my wife and I that they had done all they could do for our son. I still feel some of that pain when I look at pictures of him when he was in the ICU.
Why do I not feel the same kind of pain when I read about the crucifixion or see images of Jesus being beat, whipped, and hung on the cross? I really what to get to a point with my relationship with God that I feel the same emotions towards God that I mentioned above.
This is a tidbit of my struggle with this subject. The same goes for the second part about loving others. Some folks are easier to love and other are more difficult to love.
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