I’m going to just jump right in to my passage this morning, which you’ll find in Luke 10:25-37, and I hope you’ll follow along with me either in your Bible or Bible app.
“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” 27 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’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” 28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” 29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going 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. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 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. 35 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.’ 36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (NIV)
So now we know how we should love our neighbor, and we’re all going to be perfect at it now because we know how to do it. We’ve read it in Scripture and we’ve read it’s a command from Jesus, and so now we’re just going to decide that we’re going to love our neighbors like the Good Samaritan did and that’s that. Go and do likewise. Amen. Have a good morning.
How’s that working for you? How many of you feel like you could read those words from Scripture, great as they are, and then just decide in your mind that this is how you’re going to love your neighbors, even the ones you don’t like, and just perfectly love those people like Jesus did every single time? I think I can safely say that none of us can do this. But that’s what we’re called to do.
We’re called to love others in this way, that seeks to do the most good to the person that we see is in need of the love of Christ. The problem is that even though we know this is what we should do as Christ-followers, even though this is what we desire to do with all our hearts, there is a gap between what we know we should do and want to do, and what we actually do. There’s actually a term for this in psychology and neurology and social sciences, it’s called the “Goodness Gap”. You can see this demonstrated in your bulletin.
I believe this is what Paul was talking about in Romans 7:18-20, “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” (NIV)
How often have you felt like this? Like you know what good things you want to do, but you don’t actually do them? You’re not alone! Paul identified this as a problem in his life, and so did John Wesley! And in fact, it’s a main reason why so many people leave the church, because they clearly see this goodness gap in the church and call it hypocrisy and leave. Clearly we don’t want this to be the case, we want to be people whose love for our neighbor is so engrained in who we are that it just naturally flows from our hearts so that we always do, by natural instinct, the good we want to do. We want to close the goodness gap so that as soon as we see and recognize someone in need of Christ’s love, we automatically do what we want to do to help them out.
So what’s the solution then? This is the usual “church” answer, it’s usually one of two things: 1. PRAYER. You need to pray harder, you need to pray more, you need to pray better, pray that God will, like a magical genie, remove from you your bitterness and apathy and replace it with a heart of kindness and compassion.
Here’s the problem with that, and we see it clearly demonstrated when we pray for patience. Does God actually make you more patient just like a snap of the finger, or does He allow you to be faced with circumstances where you can grow patience? We all know the answer.
The same goes for any other Christ-like character, or virtue, as John Wesley understands it. Does God just make you a more compassionate person? No. He will give you circumstances to be more compassionate. Will He make you more forgiving? Nope. He will put you in more situations where you will have to forgive. We understand in the Nazarene tradition that this is how we see God move. We understand that God isn’t just going to force us to be more holy and loving, we must cooperate with the Spirit to practice holy living and to be transformed in our hearts to be loving as God loves.
We recall passages like Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” (NIV) That reminds us that while it is God who makes us holy and renews our mind, we must first offer ourselves and continue to offer ourselves, and we must actively be in the habit of turning from the ways of the world and practicing the ways of Christ.
The other usual church answer when we want to close the goodness gap is this, 2. Bible study. Just study your Bible more. Dig into the word. Really get into what God is saying to you. Here’s the problem with this answer: knowing about God is not the same as knowing God or being like Christ. There are scholars that spend their entire lives devoted to religious studies, particularly studies about the Bible. Some of them do not believe the Bible is true. Many believe it is simply a religious text and nothing more. They know a lot about God and Jesus and Christian living, but they don’t believe it and they certainly don’t have a relationship with God and the simple act of knowing the Bible will not make them more like Jesus. You might even know someone like this, who knows a lot about the Bible but doesn’t believe or have faith in anything written in it.
Please don’t misunderstand me, prayer and Bible study is vital to the life of the Christian. No one knew that more so than the apostle Paul, yet even he found that all of his vast knowledge of Scripture and all his deep prayer life wasn’t keeping him from doing the evil he didn’t want to do and not doing the good he wanted to do. And if we are truly honest with ourselves, we have to admit that even with a robust prayer and Bible study life, sometimes we aren’t as loving as we want to be either.
We all know the saying, “Practice makes perfect.” Yet somehow we want to think that the moment we are fully submitted to the Holy Spirit then all of a sudden we’ll just be perfectly holy people ready to love others as Christ loves us in all circumstances. The church has a misconception, as I’ve been saying, that being a Christian means we will always do as we want to do, or even as we should do, and that if we just pray hard enough and read more of our Bible then God will magically and quickly remove our vices and give us virtue.
But we can see that this isn’t how God moves. He could, but then we don’t get an opportunity to learn obedience as we go along, and it would strip us of the opportunity to truly grow in our faith and our love for God and others in a way that is lasting and genuine and comes from the heart. We need practice. We need to be better at seeing and recognizing opportunities for us to do the good we want to do. And then we need to know how to follow through with what we see, to do what Jesus would do in that situation.
Here’s a really amazing thing that I’ve learned, several times over the past three years really it just keeps becoming a lesson over and over. It started with a Bible study I did with a small group of lady friends who I’ve been friends with for years. I wish I could find the book, but to be honest, it didn’t really grab my attention then like it does now. The book was written by a woman who is a neurological surgeon, got her degree from Johns Hopkins, and she is also a devout Christ-follower. She found that when you practice specific virtues like compassion, and gratitude, and a handful of others, that if you practice them regularly and intentionally, the neurological connections in your brain actually rewire themselves so that you become a more compassionate or grateful person. So if you are doing as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18 and giving thanks in all circumstances, if you are making concerted efforts to do this regularly and intentionally, your brain rewires itself to be more grateful.
Here’s what’s amazing about this process of literally being transformed by the renewing of your mind, which goes back to Romans 12:1-2, this process isn’t a coincidence. It’s not something that just happens by chance or accident. God created our brains to work this way. He formed our minds to be able to rewire themselves as we form habits and behaviors, for good or for bad. If you let yourself have a visceral response to anger and you give in to your anger every time you become angry, your brain will rewire itself to have that response every time. But the good news is that we can do certain practices in our every day life that will rewire our brains to do the good we want to do, and for it to become second nature, so that our brains automatically do the good that we want to do as Christ-followers.
When John Wesley, whom we draw a lot of our theological understandings from, experienced what we would call in the Nazarene tradition “entire sanctification”, he described that his heart was strangely warmed. He started to see that being a Christian was more than just profession of faith with his mouth. It was a way of living, a complete devotion of himself and his entire life to God and living Christ’s way. So he set out to figure out how to do this in ways that would actually do good and grow him as a Christian. One of the first things he did was to start very small groups, core groups of men that he would gather with on a weekly, sometimes even daily basis, and they would practice Christian “charity”, or love. They were given assignments every week. One week it might be serving food at a soup kitchen. One week it might be to go and take their gently used clothing to clothe the homeless. One week it might be to help a widow with house repairs. But they were assigned a practice every single week to go and do so that they were practicing Christ’s love for their community. Then, they would come back and discuss what they learned through that practice as they prayed and studied God’s word. Wesley’s core groups heard Jesus say to them, to their hearts, “Go and do likewise,” and they practiced it every day. That is our spiritual heritage. Not just holiness in our theology, but holiness of our whole lives.
I’ve been really blessed and privileged to get to be a part of a small group of Nazarenes that are attempting to take John Wesley’s ideas of theology and small core accountability groups where they practice Christian love, and couple it with what we know about how God has created our brains to be renewed, and to put into practice in a small group setting, specific and intentional practices that will help renew our minds to be people that are more grateful, mindful, compassionate, empathic, forgiving, and trusting. This training group I’ve been a part of for a year and a half is finding that when we do specific and intentional practices that help us develop gratitude, mindfulness, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, and trust, that it helps us develop the ability to love our neighbor as God loves them, and to love ourselves as God loves us as well.
Some of you have already gone through half of round one with me, and when I look back on those meetings, I started to see some really good changes in those of us who went through the practices. I started to see better understanding of how we can show love to those around us, even if those people weren’t being very loving to us. I want to continue this small group in March, and I want to open the invitation to all of you to join me as we practice loving better so you can renew your mind to love better as well.
As I read over this week’s questions to form your quiet times this week, I want you to think about joining this small group, it will only run for 5 weeks, and think about challenging yourself to grow in your love for your neighbor in practical ways.
1. Do you find that there is a “goodness gap” in your life, a breakdown between what you want to do or “should” do as a Christian and what you actually do?
2. Which of these characteristics of Christ’s love would you like to develop more: gratitude (thankfulness), mindfulness (being aware of how others are doing and feeling), compassion, empathy (being able to feel what others are feeling), forgiveness, or trust? What have you done in the past to grow that characteristic? How did that go?
3. Are there things in your past that might keep you from loving others as Jesus loves them? (Trauma, abuse, neglect, being raised in a negative house, being raised in a secular environment, etc.)