An Appointment with Christ: A Graceful Life (Luke 6:27) Part 4

My beloved brothers, may the Lord bless you. For those of you joining our program recently, we are discussing the attitude of grace. This passage we find in the Gospel according to Saint Luke, chapter 6, beginning with verse 27 onwards. This passage is characterized by the first words that come out of the mouth of our Lord.

It says: "... love your enemies, do good to those who hate them, bless those who curse you." Further on, in other words that we have not read up to now, the Lord Jesus Christ says: "...for if you love those who love you, what merits do you have, because sinners also love those who love them, and if you do good to that they do you good, what merits you have, because sinners also do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what merit do you have? Because sinners also lend to sinners to receive back as much. So love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing, and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Therefore be merciful as your father is merciful”

You see in these following verses that we have just read, the Lord Jesus develops in more detail what He has just expressed in this condensed way when He says “....: love your enemies, do good to those who hate them, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you."

The Lord is contrasting the natural way of living with the divine way of living. We said in our last meditation that one of the reasons why it is so difficult for people to enter, and even for Christians, to enter this type of life, this style of behavior, is because it actually contradicts the natural way. of man to behave

The biological, carnal, animal, natural man behaves in a way of always seeking personal interest, always proceeding according to the principle of survival and gratification of the self, and seeking those things that are advantageous for our person. But God asks us to be uncomfortable and to choose to live on a much higher plane, the plane in which God lives, where God is uncomfortable, even by those who do not deserve such behavior.

That is why the Bible says that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life". God gave his son Jesus Christ and he was upset in a sense. The Bible says that Jesus Christ left his wealth, that being rich he became poor, being God he became man, being immortal he became mortal dying on a cross. Being perfectly pure, he became a sinner in the sense that he took on the sins of humanity for us, so that we might be saved.

That is the essence of God's grace. That's the way God works and God calls us to that height and contrasts that kind of divine behavior with the behavior of ordinary people.

It says: if you love those who love you, what a great merit that has because sinners do that too. Ordinary people love those who love them, those who treat you well, you treat them well, those who do you good and take good care of you, you also take care of them, those who give you a gift in your birthday, next year you give them a gift when they have a birthday, the one who invites you to his house to eat, you invite him to your house. That is the kind of relationship that human beings have. The person that you think can represent some advantage for you, you want to be friends with her. Some people choose churches by determining what kind of people attend it; if there are business people, if there are prosperous people because that way they can make relationships that are advantageous to them in their businesses and in other errands of life. Even there we can corrupt God's ethics for advantage.

We look for people who look like us, who are the same as us. We try to spend social time with those who can make us comfortable. We rarely seek to bless those who in some way do not represent an advantage to us.

Who do we invite during Christmas times and parties throughout the year? It is not to those who are funny, who make jokes, who are the life of the party, who play an instrument or who are conversationalists. We never invite the lonely person, the slow-talking person, the shy person, the bachelor, the person who does not necessarily have a sophisticated sense of humor, but we look for those who can beautify our gathering, our party; to make others have a happy time in such a way that the success of the party reflects back on us and people say “Wow, what a great host!” We always look for those who are already accomplished.

How many of us spend time looking for those who have not yet come to express all their beauty as a person, who have potential but have not found mentors to help them, to develop them, to give them the opportunity to learn how to move in certain social environments, but we generally look for the ones that are already finished, the ones that are already polished, the ones that can make us feel comfortable in some way.

But the Lord says “what merit is there in that?” If you invite someone to your party that you know will later invite you to a party later, what merit is there in that. There is simply personal interest, self-interest, there is no generosity, there is no kindness, there is no love and there is no element of height in that type of behavior. Unfortunately this is how people normally behave.

However, the Gospel calls us to a much, much higher, more sublime lifestyle where we act with an attitude of benevolence, of mercy towards others. We don't think so much about what is good for us, but we are always looking at how I can bless others. Our eye is a pastoral eye, it is an eye of mercy, where we look at people with a positive disposition. I love that type of person who tries to make us feel good when we have an encounter with them, instead of making us feel that we are under a critical eye, that we have to act to satisfy them and show our worth before they decide if they are going to do it. relate to us or not. I love that kind of person who immediately puts me at ease, makes me feel good, makes me feel like I'm accepted, that I don't have to prove anything, or show that I'm more sophisticated or stronger or smarter than I really am. . He does not test me but accepts me immediately and treats me with a benevolent and merciful attitude.

How cute is that kind of human being and how much this world needs that kind of person. The Lord says "...and if you do good to those who do good to you, what merits do you have, because sinners also do the same." That is, even the lowest people, even people who do not have any kind of high sense of spiritual ethics behave in this way. What the Lord is calling us is not to live in the normal way. Not living in the acceptable way. Not living even in the respectable and common way.

Many people are satisfied, many Christians included, they are satisfied with living to the minimum, living as others live. And while that is acceptable, and is legal in some sense, it is not the standard to which Christ calls us. The Lord Jesus Christ always said "... but I show you a better way." The Lord also said, in the Law of Moses it says such and such, but I tell you such and such.

That is why the Lord says: "... but I say to you who hear: love your enemies" because the world loves its friends, it does not love its enemies and yet the Lord calls us to do that. Because? Because that is the way we have to live if we are followers of Christ.

Men live in a normal, ordinary way but God wants you to live at a sublime level. Do not lend to those from whom you expect to receive, but lend to those who cannot pay you back. That's scandalous in other words. The truth is that sometimes we cannot understand this ethic of life and it is not that we are stupid, the Lord is using a kind of hyperbole here. What he's saying is don't always give at interest, don't always lend at interest. Sometimes you are going to have to lend to a person that you are not going to be sure if they can pay you or not, but do it out of mercy. Do it to get him out of trouble, do it because you are like God, you are like Christ that you love and that you give to those who cannot pay you.

Certainly that is what God has done with you and therefore it is what you should do with others. God bless you. May the grace of Jesus Christ be with you and may God help us all to live at that level of life.