Entering

I was reading the Gospels this weekend and noticed something that convicted me.

I read where Jesus was asked by the religious scholar "What's the most important commandment?". Jesus answered that it was to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. The scholar commented that Jesus was correct in this and that the Law and Prophets all hinged on these commands. It says that the Jesus saw that the scholar was insightful and said that the scholar was standing at the edge of the kingdom of God.

What? Only on the edge? I would think that if you understood this that at least you were a step or two inside the circle. That seems a little odd to me that Jesus would say that because he stated that he was opening up the kingdom of God to people in the present but that this man, as insightful as he was, was only at the edge and but not IN the kingdom. He was still on the outside looking in.

In another place another Jesus asked a religious person the same question and the man answered what Jesus said about loving God and loving others. Jesus told him this was the truth and that if he did this then he would live. In other places Jesus said that life in the kingdom was the only real life there is and that if you're not in the kingdom you're dead. Therefore if you obey these commandments and live then you're in the kingdom.

Over and over again Jesus told people to embrace this message, to live it, to mix it in with their daily living. Like yeast in bread dough, the law of love must be inexorably intertwined with the very substance of our living. Like breathing. He said that if we did then we're like the house built on a rock that can withstand the storm. If we don't live this message of love then we're like houses built on sand that collapse at the first good life storm. How true.

It's a simple thought. Don't just talk about it, do it!. It's not enough to understand it and say, like Jesus said of that generation, "Yes sir!" and nod our heads in agreement. He was frustrated with them because they weren't actually DOING it. They were just going through the motions, practicing religion. Saying all the right words but not doing the message in life. Like the insightful scholar who knew the key to the kingdom but hadn't actually ENTERED the kingdom through his actions, how many times do we talk about it, agree with it, speak it, say "Amen!" to it, but we don't actually DO it. We don't give ourselves 100% to the law of love. Well, at least I don't.

Jesus also said that on Judgement Day that thousands would come and want into the banquet feast but would be denied. He said they'd be people that would point to their lives and say "Look, we lived for you! We did many miracles and all sorts of great and spiritual things in your name! Let us in!". But Jesus said that he'd refuse them because they never really got it, they were spinning their wheels. They lived at the edge of the kingdom but never came in.

Too many of us have squinty eyes. Jesus said that the light of our body is our eyes. He's talking about our attitude. If we're generous and giving and live with an attitude of wonder and awe (like children!) then we're in the kingdom and will have life. But if we're self-centered and stingy and greedy that our lives are like dark, dank, moldy basements. That's the difference between the law of love and the living by the way of the world, self-centeredness.