3 Commitments
1. Commitment to Christ: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and most important command...” (Matthew 22:37-38)
2. Commitment to the body of Christ: "The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” (Matthew 22:39-40)
3. Commitment to the work of Christ : "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
I graduated from high school 40 years ago. 40 years and 5 months ago to be exact. Can you imagine I lived 40 years since then. Indeed, I do have many suggestions for people like you: I would say, for example, learn to speak fluently Korean and at least one more foreign languages, if your parents say OKay, plan to get married to your first girl or boy friend; I mean get married earlier than you now plan, and so on.
But, for today, I would like to narrow down all my suggestions to one area, your spiritual life in terms of 3 commitments. Why commitment? Because you gonna do and gonna be what you are committed today. We are celebrating your graduation and your graduated from the school because you had committed to do so. (No doubt your parents also had committed to support you to finish the school.) It is the same in our spiritual life, to run all the way to the finish line we need commitment on our part but also we need to commit to help others.
First of all, you need to commit yourself to the Lord.
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Why do I say that? Because God commanded it: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and most important command
If you want to truly love the Lord you have to commit yourself to the Lord.
But as you consider to commit yourself, remember He is not simply demanding your commitment to Him, but He committed Himself to you first. Indeed He first loved us and we are supposed to love Him: He demonstrated how much He loves us by sending His own Son.
Going back to my high school years,
I was very active in the church in my last 2 years of the high school years. I thought I loved the Lord, I even went to a bible college after the high school, but I didn’t even know what it means to commit myself to the Lord nor how to commit myself to the Lord. It took about a year after I graduated from the high school that I finally learned what is involved in committing myself to the Lord and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
Though you may attend church, may be very active and you may be enrolled even in Bible college, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are committed to Christ. There is a clear cut difference between church goer and Christian If you are not committed to Christ, you may be a church goer but not Christian.
But, thanks to God, I know all of you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior as you committed yourself to Him and were all baptized. I am so grateful for that. Then, why do I emphasize the commitment to the Lord?
Because, our commitment to the Lord is more than one time decision thing and more than one time event. We have to constantly remind ourselves of our commitment to the Lord. In other words we have to remain committed to the Lord. In fact Jesus said, “if you want to follow me, deny yourself and take up your cross daily and follow me.” LK 9:23
He is expecting us to daily commit ourselves to Him. To love and follow the Lord is not an event; it requires lifetime commitment. You may say “that’s impossible.” Yes, it is indeed impossible; but, you know what? The thing is He is committed to us always and first. When the bible says, “He first loved me.”, God’s love is more than one time event; His first love is continuing no matter what. You and I may go through ups and downs. But He is faithful and He is the one that always initiates loving relationship: “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” 1 Cor 1:9 God’s calling us to have fellowship with our Lord is not an one time event in the past. He continues to call us everyday.
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.)
Important as it is to love the Lord - as Rick Warren said - Jesus didn’t say, “if you love Jesus, the world will know we are His disciples.” Rather He said, “if you love one another, the world will know that you are my disciple.”
Our Lord Jesus says “love one another as I have loved you” because we need not only Jesus but also a relationship committed to one another, which is church.
As we all live such lonely self-centered world, one of the best thing you and I can do is commit yourself to church community, the body of Christ. You may live for so many different things, but at the end of the day, what matters most will be if you have real friends. God wants us to be real friends to one another as members of the body of Christ, church.
Last of all, commit yourself to the work of Christ.
I said God called us to love the Lord; Also God called us to belong to and love one another.
But, what about the people in the world? Are we supposed to ignore and abandon them?
No. the Bible says God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. God loves them all as well. That’s why our Lord Jesus commissioned us to go to the all the world: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
God called us to do something for the world. Church community doesn’t exist just for itself, but for others. If God called us to live God-centered and other-centered life, which He did, then church as a whole and each member as individual should serve the world through our life and ministry.
Imagine, if the churches throughout the history had existed for only themselves, what might have happened to the world and us? You and I wouldn’t have had a chance to hear the word of God and to know Jesus as Savior; we would have eternally perished.
If we fail to do our part by relaying the word of God to others, what would happen for the next generation and the people in other part of the world? They wouldn’t have a chance to hear the word of God. Unfortunately this is what is happening already here and in many parts of the world.
Again we became followers of Jesus because the Christians in the past had Been faithful in their working for the Lord. Now it’s our turn. Depending on our commitment, many would have a chance to hear the gospel or not.
we need to commit to the work of Christ, because Jesus commanded it.
we need to pray for missionaries that we sent
we need to give tithe and offering sacrificially to support our mission work
we need to send others or go ourselves - either by sharing here or going to mission field
(Again I am so thankful and proud of Gloria, SangA and Bowas going Arizona for mission work. God will honor their work.)
“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” 1 Cor 15:58
After all you and I have to live for something, after all you and I have to commit to something or someone, then why not commit ourselves first to the Lord Himself, the most glorious person, to one another as church and the work Jesus our Lord commissioned us to do. Those are Worth dying for. Lord! Help us.
