DEVOTIONAL THOUGHTS

Doing VS Done Religions

“Love your Neighbor as yourself.” So says God’s law. So, say hi to the widow who lives next door, get to know the names of your neighbors’ dogs and their owners, and invite them over for coffee --your neighbors, not the dogs. Do you now feel better about yourself?

When an expert in Jewish law asked Jesus what he must DO to inherit eternal life, and Jesus asks him what God commands him to DO, he correctly summarizes the second group of the Ten Commandments. Jesus says: “Do this and you will live.” (Luk 10:28).

What follows is Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Does Jesus want you to be like the Good Samaritan so you can feel good about yourself, make this world a kinder place, and satisfy your need to say, “I’ve DONE what will get me a reward”? But you can’t DO what the Good Samaritan did and so perfectly keep the law of love! Nor can you “inherit” eternal life by keeping the law of humanism: Do to others what you want them to do to you.

Two months lodging at a motel is $6,000. $20 a day for food is $1200. So would you plop down $7200 and leave your credit card with the motel owner for an injured or needy person, and then do this for every needy person you meet? None of us can do that. None of us can love our neighbor as our self, perfectly and always.

Read the parable. The Good Samaritan there is not you and me. He’s not what we are supposed to try harder to be. That’s what a DOING religion teaches – what all but one religion teaches. It’s not what Jesus, the Christ and the Son of God, the Savior of all sinners teaches. The Good Samaritan shows us who Jesus is and what Jesus DID.

I see me and you as the “victim” – beaten by robbers, half-dead, completely helpless, unable to do anything! I need Jesus, the Good Samaritan, to have compassion on me and to rescue me. That’s what Jesus did for you by his life and his death on the cross. That’s the DONE religion.

If the main and most frequent message you hear from a church is “Do this. Don’t do that. Be better at doing this. You better not do that,” then it’s not a part of Jesus’ church, which proclaims the Gospel (Good News): “You are saved from your sins and evil by what Jesus DID; by Jesus who said on the cross, ‘It is finished.’” DONE! Sins paid. God’s commandments kept for you. Holiness earned. Eternal life promised.

God has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints (Colossians 1:12). God saved us, not by what we have done, but by what he has done. (Titus 3:5)

Only that will give you the motivation and the power to go out and be “like” the Good Samaritan.

Come to the DONE religion.

Come, worship with us on Sundays at 10 am.