Concerning the "Crux of Christianity"

WEB Mark 12:29 Jesus answered, “The greatest is, ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one: 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’This is the first commandment. 31 The second is like this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. [Matt 22:]40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

32 The scribe said to him, “Truly, teacher, you have said well that he is one, and there is none other but he, 33 and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

34 When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from God’s Kingdom.”

It's not about whole burnt offerings and sacrifices, or about what day is our "worship day", or how many cups we have in the Lord's Supper, or whether your body sways in the final verse of "Just As I Am"; it's about our relationship with God, and with one-another.

Jesus has repaired our relationship with God; we need to repair our relationships with one-another.

Here's a sampling of what God wants and doesn't want from us:

WEB Amos 5:6 Seek Yahweh, and you will live; ... 7
You who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth: ... 11 Therefore, because you trample on the poor, and take taxes from him [while you live high and mighty in fancy stone houses] ... how many your offenses, and how great are your sins—you who afflict the just, who take a bribe, and who turn aside the needy in the courts. ... 14 Seek good, and not evil ... 15 Hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the courts. ... [As it currently is,] 21 I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies.22 Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat animals. 23 Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24 But let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

No matter how perfect our solemn assemblies may be on paper, if our relationships are sour with one-another, he hates our assemblies.

Jesus said this:

WEB Matt 5:23 “If therefore you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

Relationship-repairing trumps being at church on Sunday morning.

And remember in Matthew 25, when the son of Man separates the "sheep" from the "goats". Does he make the separation based on their doctrinal beliefs? On their allowing of women to speak in assemblies? On their teaching concerning the so-called "Rapture"? No. He separates them based on how they treated one another.

And James tells us what pure religion is:

WEB Jam 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

James also tells us how to fulfill the Royal Law:

WEB Jam 2:8 However, if you fulfill the royal law, according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well.

Paul tells us how to fulfill the Law of Christ:

Web Gal 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

YHWH tells us what it is to know him:

NIV Jer 22:16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the LORD.

and what it is that he requires:

WEB Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does Yahweh require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Over and over the message is justice, mercy, burden-sharing, freeing from oppression, healing - it's not "Can we observe Christmas?" or "Is one sip of alcohol going to send me to hell?"

Here's a snippet of the first sermon Jesus gave as he started his three-year ministry:

WEB Luke 3 4:17 The book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He opened the book, and found the place where it was written, 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, 19 and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” 20 He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began to tell them, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

(Our churches should be sponsoring college students to study how to be social workers (healing the broken-hearted), to be lawyers (providing justice to the falsely-accused and oppressed), to be medical researchers and doctors (to heal blindness), to be financial counselors (to help get people out of crushing debt), as well as to be preachers - in short, to be Social Justice Warriors (as bad as that term is politically amongst many of us). The students could then pay back the church by offering reduced-price/free services for a decade, or hefty contributions toward the next generation's education, or ....)

Here's what Jesus said about meticulous detail to legalities as opposed to being other-focused, and as to which of the two is weightier:

WEB Matt 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith.

Even our assemblies are never stated to be for the purpose of God-focus; rather, they're to be one-another focused.

WEB Heb 10:24 Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good works, 25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as you see the Day approaching.

and

WEB 1 Cor 14:26 What is it then, brothers? When you come together, each one of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has another language, has an interpretation. Let all things be done to build each other up.

Yes, worship takes place in the assembly (e.g., 1 Cor 14:25), as it should "day and night" (e.g. Luke 2:37), but that's not the purpose of assembling. It can be perfectly good worship, but if it doesn't benefit the others in the assembly, it doesn't belong in the assembly (1 Cor 14:17); this is because the assembly's purpose is not vertically-focused toward God, but horizontally-focused toward one-another. Even the Lord's Supper, if it excludes the one-anotherness of recognizing the body of believers, is not really the Lord's Supper, and the fix for this is not to "worship better", but to "wait for one another" (1 Cor 11:17-34).

Over and over: It's not about rituals; it's about relationships.

Originally published at:
https://kentwest.blogspot.com/2019/05/concerning-crux-of-christianity.html