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John 15:12

NASB	NLT	VOICE
12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”	12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.	12 My commandment to you is this: love others as I have loved you.

Mutual Love of Christ

As we’ve discussed recently, the love described here is an active decision to prioritize the welfare of others. In the Greco-Roman world, love was understood in the realms of familial or reciprocal relationships: “Love each other as you love yourself.” Jesus calls for a love that goes beyond those boundaries. Deuteronomy 6:5 describes this love of God that is now being shared to the world: “And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.” This love is shown through communal living and mutual support. Jesus is the standard of this type of love – sacrificial and unconditional. It’s shown through His actions, His words, and ultimately His sacrifice. Jesus humbled Himself to the state of a servant and became obedient to death.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: This love is about living in community and supporting each other. What are 3 things you can start doing that can support those around you?

God’s Love in Action

There are two things that stick out to me here: the movement from “love your neighbor as you love yourself” to “love your neighbor with all your heart, soul, and strength,” and the mindset that this love is best described through communal living and mutual support.

I’ve discussed before what it means to love God with your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Let’s talk about that again, but in the perspective of loving each other. The heart was believed to be the home of our thoughts, will, conscience, and emotion. It’s a focus area where either will obey God’s command, or rebel against it. In the Deuteronomy 6 context, it’s a place of wholehearted devotion. When we’re in community, we should create a mindset of devotion to make sure that our neighbors are being taken care of. We check-in with each other, ask each other how we’re genuinely doing and listen to the responses of our neighbors intentionally. If they need something, such food, resources, money, or our time and energy. We are called to sacrifice our resources to those around us to those that are in need. I also am viewing this in the realm of our immediate community too, but if we expand on this – we can find communities in need all over the world. From the people in Palestine, Ukraine, and the Congo, who are under attacks from other countries and have had their resources severely limited to a place of potential death. From the people in Venezuela who are waiting with bated breath how the transitional government power will affect their daily lives. From the people in the southern United State currently, who are facing massive severe winter weather that are outside of their normality. There are people outside of our town, city, and state that are suffering as well. It can be overwhelming to try and seek out their situations, understand how you can help, and dedicate your resources to helping those people. In my experience, we must remember that we cannot pour from an empty cup and cannot help everyone. So, we must be wise in our decision-making and wise with our resources to make sure we can survive, and also that we can effectively help others. It’s good to do your research, find areas to help, and ask God: “Where can I best help with the resources I have?” See where He guides you and trust that His guidance will lead to greatest help.

Your soul was believed to be the living being itself. It’s the inner self that has thoughts, emotions, and desires. It’s a helpful reminder to us that every person we interact with and see in our paths of life has a story, full of highs and lows. We often do not know their stories. When they do share, we often remember that person solely off their stories: “He was a gambler.” “She’s the drinker.” “They cheated on their significant others.” We need to start remembering that each person is just that, a person. They are a human, created by God, struggling with sinful behavior. Instead of “He was a gambler,” try, “He is a person who struggles with a gambling addiction.” Instead of “She’s a drinker,” try, “She is a person that struggles with alcoholism.” When we start to put the person first, we can start to work towards a place of help, trust, and above all – love. I remember when our Protection Policy training session at the churches I work at shifted to talking about how to care for kids, teens, and vulnerable adults as a person-first. It was desperately needed, because we often viewed them with the issues that come across. When we started to be able to shift from, “That kid is trouble,” to “That is a child that struggles with anxiety and has ADHD.” We can start to make accommodations and start to developing an environment that they can thrive in as God created them.

Your strength intensifies your actions, emotions, and gifts. Like we’ve talked about, it’s about jumping into loving and caring for your neighbor with everything that you have. It’s about simply enveloping everything we talked about above, completely and thoroughly through all parts of your life.

When we do this, we truly and authentically share God’s love that is gifted to us with everyone around us. A greater way of showing this is through mutual support. My concept to me that my friend introduced me to a couple of years ago. It’s a direct aid network that removes the go-between of government structures and non-profit work that helps people out whenever needed. They’ve created a system where people have asked for help with bills of various kinds, help with groceries and meals, help with education expenses, and unexpected bills. You name it, I’ve seen it. Now, you might be asking, “Well – how do you know that people aren’t taking advantage of it?” It’s a valid question, but one that misses the point of mutual aid. Have there been people that we’ve questioned? Yes. There was concern about what was happening, but we talked with them, understood their perspective and story, and worked towards an outcome that kept the sanctity and mission of that network alive, while also becoming intentional to caring for that person. You don’t know if others are genuine, but it’s not up to us to judge. If people need our help, our response is to help. For my beliefs, we help and God will guide. For others, we help and karma will get them. We have to assume that people won’t misuse the network, but none of us are perfect.

We must remove the biases and judgments that come with helping others so that we can start to view each other as people that need help and to understand ways how we can make that happen. When we do, we again, share the love that God shares with us.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: Look around your communities that you’re a part of. How can you instill mutual aid to people that are in need?

(No PRAY Action for this – I’ve talked enough and gifted you a lot of things to think about.)

Next slice of manna: Strength in Faith, Not Chariots || Psalm 20:7 || Manna for the Mind #321