Jesus said that all of the commandments could be summed up in two: 1) To love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind and with all your soul; 2) to love your neighbor as yourself. Now, we can ask the same question as the ‘Expert on the Law' (did and say, “Just who is my neighbor”? (Luke 10:33) I’m sure all of you remember the parable of the Good Samaritan. After Sunday School today I got to thinking on the following: A known young woman of ill repute, commonly called by society, a whore. She is known to be a prostitute; comes into the neighborhood and while soliciting to some local men she is taken by force and was date raped and left in the street. She got up crying, disheveled and tried walking away. Several of the same neighborhood were walking by and derided her and yelled insults and accusations towards her.
Let’s go a little further with this. Right at this point Jesus walks on the scene and asks what is happening. The people answer saying that this woman is a whore and has been enticing men in the neighborhood living an immoral life style and a bad influence on the young people in the neighborhood. Jesus asks what should be done with her and they reply that she should be thrown out of the neighborhood even turn over to the authorities.
Let me interject here that these people consider themselves ‘good upright Christians’. And yes, they attend Church every Sunday, go to their Sunday School classes and Wednesday night services and even home Bible studies. They are familiar with the Scripture.
So Jesus says to them that they are right, that is what they should do according to the law. Then he adds that the person or persons that is sinless should be the one to proceed. One by one the people that were gathered there start to leave. Why? Because they are all knowledgeable of the Scripture and now that all have sinned and come short of God’s glory.(Rom. 3:23; Psalm 51)
After a short time Jesus asks the young woman who accuse her of any wrong doing and she looks up, sees that everyone has left and says that no one now accuses her of anything. And Jesus tells her that neither does He accuse her, to go in peace and just don’t continue anymore in her ways; to repent [change] her ways and sin no more.
But you may ask right here, what about the men? The men are not the issue at this point. The issue is: 1) Who is my neighbor? We are to love, [(agape), meaning benevolent, caring, love that embraces the truth, the love of men towards God, the love of God towards men, love expressed Christian to Christian from the soul, we can go on and on], others as we love ourselves. Our neighbor is anyone and everyone whether a true Christian, a none believer, our enemy. Don’t look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention the beam in your own eye. Don’t be like the hypocrites of which Isaiah wrote, “they honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. (Is. 29:13) Remember also, Jesus said that if you do not forgive, God will not forgive you. (Matt. 6:15)
But the Good News is that the Lord God creator of the universe, gave up His position while maintaining His deity and taking on flesh, [what we today celebrate as Christmas] was obedient to God even to the death on the cross [we celebrate on Good Friday] so pay the price for us, and rose from the dead, [Easter]. Why must we forgive others? Because God has forgiven us!!
