Deacon Ray’s Corner

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  • Jesus Elevates the Law (2/22/2025)

    In the Gospel passage this weekend Jesus tells His followers to love your enemies. He has taken the teaching from Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18, and elevated this commandment to include love of enemies in general, not only your fellow countrymen. Jesus came to bring the mind of God to us, instructing us how we are to live. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus had just given His Beatitudes and in a similar way to Matthew’s Gospel, He explains the teachings of the Law in a fuller, God-like manner. If you recall in Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5, 6, and 7, Jesus gives us the Beatitudes and carries on about the law. He takes command of the Law and explains what has been the practice in the past, and He now opens our minds and hearts. He often says in these chapters; “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil…”

    Jesus is acting in the person of God, who handed down the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai. He is telling His followers, and us, there is a higher standard to follow if you become one of His disciples. You can imagine how shocking the Jews of Jesus day were. Moses had brought the tablets of the Law, written by the finger of God to the people. That had been the teaching people lived by those many years. Yet now Jesus takes on the authority of God to define the Law. To accept Jesus as lawgiver took faith, just as it does today. We know Jesus was the Son of God, but the people of His day had to come to this belief by witnessing His actions, teachings, healings and the love He gave. We, too, must come to belief through the gift of faith. We too must do as Jesus says.

    I pray that each of us can come to full belief in Jesus as teacher and savior. To live as Jesus asks takes faith and courage. To love our enemies may be one of the hardest things we could be asked, but with God’s assistance all things are possible!

    Deacon Ray

 

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