Crushing Racism Shembull

The Command to Love Crushes Racism
 

Jesus’s wisdom and authority often lead people to ask Him hard questions––the kind of questions that you keep to yourself, hoping that one day you will find someone who might be able to answer them. Sometimes, those who asked Him questions did not have good intentions.

 

On one occasion, Jesus was surrounded by two groups of religious people: Pharisees and Sadducees. One of the Pharisees, a lawyer, after seeing that Jesus silenced the Sadducees with His answer, asked Him a question to test Him, “`Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40 NKJV) 

Consider Jesus’s answer and think about how these two commandments go together. If you love God, if you say you do, and you do not love people (all people) then, you are not loving God because they go together––they are inseparable. You can know and quote Scripture from beginning to end, you can give thousands of dollars to missions, and you may go to church more than once a week. That’s all good, but what makes you a Christian and distinguishes you from the rest of well-intentioned people is love for one another. 

Loving those who are similar to us is easy. There are no significant differences that may cause friction in our relationship. In contrast, loving those who are notably different from us is not easy. We surely need God’s help. Once more, the apostle Paul urges us to have another mindset, one that was demonstrated by Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8 ESV). Are we willing to love in the same way Jesus loved us? 

Prayer

Jesus, teach me to love in the same way You loved me. May Your love in me bring healing and restoration to those who are suffering the consequences of racism. Only Your love crushes racism!