Tag-Archive for » Leviticus 19:18 «

Textual Emendation

Monday, April 19th, 2010 | Author: Skip Moen

“you have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.’” Matthew 5:43

Enemy – Who said that?  Who said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy”?  If you look at the reference in Leviticus 19:18, you won’t find the second part of this citation.  In fact, you will find an entire section devoted to care and concern for your neighbor.  There is not a word about hating your enemy.  In fact, if you search Leviticus for verses about an enemy (Hebrew ‘oyev), you will find most of them in chapters 26 and 27, the discussion is about what will happen with enemies when the people are obedient and when they are not.  While there are descriptions about pursuing enemies when God is with the people, there is nothing about hating enemies.

Now you know why Yeshua doesn’t say, “It is written.”  He comments on what has been taught about enemies, not what is written in God’s Word.  Some popular teaching and the accumulation of folk wisdom distinguished between love for a neighbor and hatred for an enemy.  The common interpretation of the relationship to enemies emended the text.  It added “and hate your enemy.”  Yeshua rejects this folk wisdom as incompatible with God’s actions toward enemies.  If we are to emulate the behavior of the Father, we will do what He did – love our enemies and do good to those who reject and disparage us.  In other words, Yeshua points away from the common understanding and toward the deeper principle of the Torah.  That deeper principle is based in the character of God.  When we express God’s character, we fulfill the requirements of the Torah.

Of course, loving your enemies is not a “reasonable” thing to do.  In a world where self-interest predominates, doing good to those who intend to harm you is simply crazy.  Who would ever do such a thing?  Our natural inclination is self-protection and retaliation.  But the principle underlying Torah is the denial of self-interest and abandoned trust in God.  As we have already seen, this does not entail allowing evil to have its way.  Justice matters.  But it does entail setting aside our self-absorbed view of life.  God’s plans are bigger than our plans and we cannot base our decisions on what we think best.  Yeshua is not suggesting acquiescence.  He is asking us to re-evaluate our motivation.  He is asking us to make ethical decisions on the basis of God’s agenda, not our own.

The line between self-motivation and godly obedience is often very thin and sometimes nearly invisible.  Only the one deciding can really tell the difference.  But the difference is important enough to be illuminated by Yeshua’s commentary.  The resulting action might not look any different.  That doesn’t matter here.  What matters is a thorough examination of the reason we take action.  Dependence, humility and obedience always come before categorizing another as an enemy.  Lines drawn in the sand aren’t always drawn with God’s finger.  Knowing when they are drawn with my finger prevents me from overstepping God’s point of view.

Who are your enemies?  What is your obligation toward them?  Who draws the line for you?

Topical Index:  enemy, hate, ‘oyev, Matthew 5:43, Leviticus 19:18

DID YOU SEE IT! Israel DVDs have arrived.  Click here.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 5 Comments

Kingdom Ethics

Saturday, September 05th, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you,” John 13:34

Love – Why does Yeshua say this is a new commandment? Doesn’t the Torah teach us to love one another? Isn’t that the point of loving your neighbor? What makes this particular statement so unique?

Christians have often cited this verse as the basis for an ethical principle. They have claimed that the New Testament is no longer based on Jewish legislated morality but on an eternal principle of moral action. That principle is love for each other. But this presents a problem. Childs makes the observation, “The biblical narratives are not a collection of teachings on virtue, character, and morality. In fact, the Bible amazes us by its remarkable indifference to our conceptions of good and evil. Rather its chief concern is not the doing of man, but of God. ‘It is not the right human thought about God which forms the content of the Bible, but the right divine thoughts about man’ (Barth, 43).” In other words, the Bible is not man’s attempt to develop an appreciation of the divine or a code of ethics based on the divine. The Bible is God’s thoughts about us! Attempts to derive ethical principles from the Bible miss the point. The Bible is not about ethical principles. It’s about God’s view of the human condition.

How does this insight help us? First, it corrects all attempts to come up with some kind of universal moral directive – like “love each other.” It’s popular to say that the hallmark of Christian living is love, but this is a mistake. Why? It’s a mistake because it strips away the context of life in the Spirit. It holds up an independent principle not anchored in God’s personal interaction with us. Principles of ethics are Greek-based concepts derived from human reason about what is good, but the Hebrew Scriptures are not about principles. They are about a living, dynamic, personal relationship – a relationship that has ebbs and flows, that weaves its way into all sorts of human activities and that isn’t always so neat and organized. The Scriptures are stories and thoughts about concrete, real-life events woven into the fabric of God’s interactions with us. The Bible, as Childs says, is remarkable in its indifference to our categories of right and wrong, good and evil. For example, why create the Tree? The Bible is about God’s point of view, not ours – and it does not accommodate our trivial questions.

Secondly, by recognizing that “love” is not a principle, but an event-relationship, we see that Yeshua’s new commandment is the extension of God’s point of view. “As I have loved you,” qualifies what was already there. I already knew that God loves. He loves me and He loves my neighbor. I already had Leviticus 19:18. But now I discover that God’s love embraces self-sacrifice on behalf of others. It is more than benevolence. It is costly benevolence, in character with the Son who died for me. When I find myself in relationship with Him, I realize that my life becomes an expression of His life. And so does my death. There are no limits on what God would do to rescue me. There can be no limits on what I will do to rescue you. It’s not quite as simple as WWJD, is it?

Topical Index: love, agape, ethics, principles, relationship, John 13:34, Leviticus 19:18

B. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, p. 679.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , , ,  | 12 Comments

Who Lives Next Door? (1)

Friday, June 19th, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service and to building up the body of Christ.  Ephesians 4:11-12

Equipping  - Why did the Lord provide the Body with all of these gifted people?  What is the purpose of those sent, those who reveal, those who bring good news, those who shepherd and those who instruct?  Paul doesn’t leave the question unanswered.  It is for equipping.  Now, what does that mean?

The Greek word here is a combination of kata and artios.   It means “fitted together” or “perfectly complete.”  Imagine all of the pieces that go into the construction of a house.  Each one is important to the finished product and each one depends on the others.  The foundation is not greater than the trusses.  The roof is not superior to the walls.  Unless they are all fashioned together, the house is useless.  It will not serve its purpose.  In the same way, an apostle is not elevated above a teacher, nor a prophet above a pastor.  Each one has a role to play.  There is no hierarchy of importance in house building.  It is the end product that matters, not the individual pieces.  It’s the fit that matters!

OK, now that we have that settled, what is the end product?  If you looked around, you might think that the end product of all this cooperative effort is a building called the church.  After all, if you want to meet those who claim to be apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers, you will probably find them in church buildings.  But we know, of course, that the building itself is not the goal.  In fact, there were no “church” buildings during the entire history of the New Testament.  So, the end goal is not literally a construction project.  It is about the people who make up the Body.  They are to be built up for a purpose and that purpose is works of service.  That means that the equipped body, the collection of those who are redeemed, is designed to do something.  They are to serve.

Ah, that must be that the body collects the offering, greets people at the door, arranges flowers, sings in the choir and knocks on doors with soul-winning intentions.  I don’t think so!  Paul intends us to see that we are equipped in order to make a difference in the lives of others. Paul’s Hebrew background adds an element found in Jewish Law.  Israel’s social policy stood on the foundation of God’s command concerning the neighbor.  Leviticus 19:18 was the inescapable obligation of service as an essential part of the religious experience.  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” left no equivocation about the obligation entailed in community.  In the Hebrew view, willingness to service the needs of your neighbor are inextricably bound to service to God.  The Hebrew culture is defined not only by its exclusiveness in the worship of Yahweh but also by its divinely instituted relationship to the larger community.  No man exists simply to improve his own individual self-understanding.  His very existence is tied to the well-being of his fellow men. 

Contemporary Christianity often finds itself uneasily straddling both the Greek and Hebrew views of a readiness to serve.  On the one hand, we have been thoroughly indoctrinated by the post-modern culture where individualism reigns supreme.  Freedom is often viewed solely within the Greek mindset as my right to self-determination without obligation to any others.  In this view, if I choose to act on behalf of another, I do so from enlightened self-interest, not from a submersion of individual identity into the consciousness of the community.  Acts of charity motivated by a Greek worldview may be magnanimous, but they are not expressions of self-emptying in response to a divine imperative.  The church falls prey to this cult of the individual when it promotes service as a means of goal accomplishment.  Levitical charity does not ask for measurable returns.  It demands only unreserved distribution in the face of need.  Where budgets, program considerations and political implications blunt the demand to serve the “neighbor”, the church enters into the Greek world of calculated generosity.  It hears the Levitical call, but resists unwavering response because it is trapped in the polis of a world conformed to the thought patterns of the Greeks.  Even the designation of “neighbor” becomes problematical whenever “neighbor” is subjected to a socio-political calculus.

Jesus strengthened the concept of service.  Service is now not only an obligation issued by God; it is the defining mark of true discipleship.  Those who resist the call for self-emptying volunteers cannot enter into the true destiny of Man, nor will they find a welcome home with God.  Service is the human mission.

So, what does it mean to serve my neighbor?  You might want to think about that question until tomorrow.

Topical Index:  equip, serve, oikodome, church, body, Ephesians 4:11-12, Leviticus 19:18  

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , , ,  | 8 Comments