3 Commitments

Secondly, commit yourself to the body of Christ, one another.

After Jesus said, ”love God with all your heart, soul, and mind”, he went on to say, “likewise love your neighbor as yourself” Note “likewise”, which means “love your niighbor as yourself” is like first commandment. Living bible put it this way: A second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

As important as the first one - Love your God with all your heart, soul, and mind - so is the second one - 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

Let me explain what Jesus said, Jesus didn’t say love the whole world or all human beings. Rather He said, “Love your neighbor” because God knows our limitation. We simply can’t love all the people out there, but we can our neighbors. So before we try to love, we have to acknowledge our limitation and we have to define who is our neighbor.

In the OT period, the people lived in the same community for generation after generation; they were not supposed to move out from the place they inherited. So their neighbor was predtermined before they were born and were obligated to live with fixed neighbor until they died.

But, in the NT period, our Lord Jesus started a new community called church and whoever is part or member of the community is neighbor: “SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE of you WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, for we are members of one another.” Eph 4:25

Unfortunately there are so many Christians out there who don’t belong to a church community; They may have personally committed to Christ and may even attend church but they haven’t committed to any specific church community.

There are so many “one another” commandments in the new testament. But, you can’t obey and practice such commandment because you don’t belong to a community; you don’t have a neighbor you can practice “one another relationship”. That’s why we invite people not only to Christ we also invite them to join the church community.

I am so grateful that Bowas, Eddie and Nahyun are interested in committing themselves to our church community, taking the membership class now.

I said I am so grateful, because you guys were basically saying to me and other church members, “I want to be your neighbor”. Personally I heard you seemed to say to me, “Pastor Park, I know you are not best minister available, but I love you and I want to be your friend.”

The greatest gift one can offer others is to say "I need you" and I want to be your friend and I want to commit myself to you guys. That’s what you are doing. Can you imagine how happy I am!

Yes, what you and I need most and what people need most is real neighbor, real friend who really cares one another. (After all we all live in the lonely world, a world full of self centered people, church could be the only place where people with different background practice the love of God for one another.)

To those who are already members of this church, I would like to say, we all have to ask ourselves if we live as neighbor in the Lord, loving as our Lord Jesus commanded. (in fact I acknowledge I haven’t been a good example when it comes how we as neighbor treat one another, but I will try.)