I’m switching now to a dual focus on the two greatest commandments. I’m going to do it in a way I’ve never seen anyone write or teach on. Since everyone in my initial audience will know pretty well what it means to love our neighbors within the Church, I want to go a harder direction.
I’m going to start this the same way Jesus did, and the implications of where I’m heading after that will start to get pretty clear.
Luke 10:25-37 NIV
"On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? How do you read it? He answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. You have answered correctly Jesus replied. Do this and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor? In reply Jesus said: A man was down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, go and do likewise".
This is one of those passages many of us already know something about. A well known and taught example of what it means to love ones neighbor. As we read it from a modern western lens, we tend to focus on the fact that a man was horribly beat up and that people simply passed by while someone was in distress.
What we don’t usually pick up on is the fact that three groups of people of the time period are being represented in this story. A Priest in the temple at this time period was the closest thing these people had to a modern Pastor today. He was a religious leader in his day and the figure we would imagine to be the first to show compassion. The Levite in the story would have had a functional role in the temple being from the priestly tribe of Levi.
According to the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible- Following Jewish tradition, ritual impurity would be contracted by touching a dead body, including even if their shadow touched it. This is likely the reason why these two passed on the other side.
The hero we now refer to as the good Samaritan- was the hated foreigner in the context of the day. According to the Jews, he was not included among the people of God. We would refer to him in this day as the highly unliked nonbeliever in the story.
The NIV Chronological study Bible gives us even more context here. “The Samaritan, a mortal enemy of all jews, took pity on the man and offered him an extraordinary degree of assistance. If Jesus’ sole intention had been to say that one’s neighbor includes everyone, there would have been no need to identify the actors as a Levite, a Priest, and a Samaritan. Jesus was also critiquing the heartlessness of those jews who allowed the law to thwart their humanity. With this parable Luke continues a favorable theme: the inclusion of all nations in the people of God. Even a Samaritan can aspire to eternal life.”
Mathew Henry’s commentary quotes Dr. John Lightfoot. “The Jews had a very corrupt notion that Jesus corrected here. Lightfoot quotes their words “Where he saith, thou shalt love thy neighbor, he excepts all Gentiles, for they are not our neighbors, but only those that are of our own nation and religion. They would not put an Israelite to death for killing a Gentile, for he was not his neighbor: they indeed would say they ought not kill a Gentile whom they are not at war with; but if they saw a Gentile in danger of death, they thought themselves under no obligation to help save his life. Such wicked inferences did they draw from that holy covenant of peculiarities by which God had distinguished them, and by abusing it thus they had forfeited it; God justly took the forfeiture, and transferred covenant-favors to the Gentile world, to whom they brutishly denied common favors.”
More context from the Bible itself. LK 9:51-62
"As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and john saw this, they asked, Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village."
I’m aware of no other place in the New Testament where even Jesus disciples were quickly willing to both destroy a village and try to do it with the power of God.
When we think about the command to love our neighbor today, what we usually have in mind is some sort of neighborly regard for the strangers around us. In our churches these are those we don’t know very well or at all. In our communities, these are the strangers we pass on a walk, or may have an interaction in passing at the park.
While that mindset is not necessarily wrong, it is not what Jesus meant when He answered the question here “who is my neighbor?”. Most of us would not presume Jesus was talking about trying to manufacture an attitude of neighborly regard toward those we really dislike, or consider to be in the wrong. These groups of people that were represented in the story would have had nothing that could be considered neighborly regard for each other.
As pointed in the “Knowing God” series, love for God has an active component that is necessary for validating-(imperfectly of course) the right kind of faith.
As loving God should be an active love, so loving our neighbor is an active love as well.
(1 JN 3:18)”let us not love with words or speech, but with actions, and in truth.”
Where you’re tracking with me so far saying “ok, I kind of know this already”- let me throw us off track. It seems to me many Christians today have a strong tendency to read the Bible in a way that is favorable toward ourselves.
How do we actively love our neighbor in the Church who disagrees with us?
More specifically- How do we love other Christians who disagree with us on present day culture wars?
How do we actively show love to the nonbeliever who vehemently disagrees with us on culture wars?
Loving our neighbor is of course far broader than just the context of culture wars, but this direction of it is so front and center today, and so controversial. I don’t know what direction of loving our neighbor is more prevalently wrestled with and difficult to figure out as much as navigating the muck and mire of culture wars.
The general wisdom many of us already know is to cite (Eph 4:15) “speak the truth in love”.
While this is not wrong- how do we differentiate cultural truth from Biblical truth?
Even in our Church traditions reformers will sing the Reformation Hymn which says “our traditions sift like sand, but your truth forever stands”.
The Bible is the story of redemptive history. It is not a textbook for any other subject. How do we navigate the truth that does not necessarily come from it, but from culture and other subjects?
All these questions, I won’t to try to get into in this post. The reason for asking these questions is to start bringing to the forefront questions which make all of us wonder and wrestle. I believe a distinction is necessary before I can make any progress writing about the tough issues of the day.
Objective Truth and Subjective/Cultural Truth
Normally these are something we only hear about if the philosophy angle of Christian apologetics is discussed. The distinction is referred to when we sing in the Reformation Hymn “Our traditions sift like sand, but your truth, forever stands.”
When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (JN 14:6)- let’s focus on “I am the truth”.
Notice he didn’t say “I speak the truth” although he said that too.
What does it mean that he is the truth?
In Christianity, it means that he is the highest source for truth, and the highest authority for truth. Neither of these depend on the “sinking sand” (MT 6:26) of disobedience, or as the song refers to it, our traditions.
If there is such a thing as objective truth- as Christian philosophers would argue there is, it must be unchanging in nature. Not dependent on changing times, changing cultures, or empires rising and falling. It is rather self evident that customs change, both over time, and across territories. If Jesus is the truth- then there is a distinction between these two types of truth.
If there is a distinction between two types of truth, there is also a source and an origin for two types of truth.
The origin of objective truth technically happened in eternity past in Christ. The origin of subjective, cultural, and changing truth happened in Genesis 3 with the fall of man. St. Augustine would claim it started before that with the rebellion of the devil and his demons.
The one source of truth, we would call the head figure of the Kingdom of God. The other source of truth, resulted from the fall of man, and rebellion against God. It is subject to change and the evil and decay of a fallen world. So it is far more prone to error.
These two sources of truth, with the sources they come from- as St. Augustine tells us in “The City of God”- “Those two cities are interwoven and intermixed (Marcus Dodds translation-“entangled”) in this Era, and await separation at the last judgement” (Book 1, ch. 35).
Two types of “truth” are tangled together, as are the cities they come from.
But the devil is the father of lies right? So why are we granting the “truth” label to the side he has most under control? Because the Devil does not normally do his work with obvious lies. He takes the “truth”, or at least the perceived truth, and he twists it, as he did in the first temptation of Adam and eve. In the original temptation the devil twisted the words between (Gn 2:17), and (Gn 3:3). In the temptation of our Lord in (MT 4), the devil tried to use scripture to get Jesus to sin. Our lord out quoted the devil. The truth that’s being twisted is where the lie gets it’s power.
I am now convinced that a better understanding of these two cities will give us not only a better understanding of the world we live in, but will better enable us to show love to someone we strongly disagree with in culture. Cultural struggles are not going anywhere, and they’re not getting any easier to figure out.
It is these two directions this blog is now headed.
Love of God- as primarily focused on the Church and the truths we hold to.
Love of neighbor, for now will be primarily focused on the present day and cultural barriers we constantly wrestle with. I know of no other direction that is more of a challenge to the Church today.
Where cultural struggles are concerned, as subjective and cultural truth is more prone to error, so my thoughts regarding it should not be taken with authority.
Augustines two cities are not something many Christians today seem to know about. I never learned about them despite being raised in the CRC and Christian education. The number of Church history sources that refer to it, if I focused purely on them, would be highly academic in tone. They would likely be a bore to push through, and it would leave the audience wondering what does this mean? Why is this important for today? Does it actually change anything?
Instead of that approach, I’m going to start, as this post does, briefly and repetitively showing you many places where this distinction is attested to in the Bible, Church history, and Reformation era confessions of faith. As we do so, we need to work toward understanding how the gospel works with God’s promise to Abraham- “Through your offspring all the nations on earth will be blessed” (Gn 22:18). We also need to imitate our chief example who is Christ. For that end, we need to work toward understanding Bible stories that show us our Lord stepping through cultural barriers to love others.
For those who may not know, St Augustine is one of the better known Church fathers. He was the Bishop of Hippo in the early 4th century A.D. He is often referred to by theologians today as a pre-Reformed reformer, being one who the Reformers of the 15 century would cite when arguing against the errors of the 15th century Roman Catholic Church. Catholics and Protestants alike revere the legacy he left on Church history.
Works cited
St. Augustine. City of God. Translated by Henry Bettison, Penguin Classics, 1972, p. 46.
Henry, Matthew. Biblestudytools, Salem Web Network, http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/luke/10.html.
Thomas Nelson. The Chronological Study Bible. New International Version ed., Biblica, inc., 2011, pp. 1178-79.
Biblica. NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. Zondervan, 2011, pp. 1768-69.
I believe the Reformation Hymn is in public domain, I don’t have a hymnal right now for copyright details.
Edifying Christianity 