Doing Justice and Loving Kindness

January 30, 2019

Doing Justice and Loving Kindness

“Let your bearings towards one another arise out of your life in Christ Jesus”

Philippians 2:5 (NEB 1961)

When you are able to make peace with your own paradoxical nature, you can hear the words of a spiritual director, “Give up trying to look like a saint. It’ll be a lot better for everybody.” When we are at peace with God, who is at peace with us, we can lay aside our obsession with projecting the perfect Christian image and get on with living our life in Christ, which is simply a matter of practicing WWJD. (What Would Jesus Do?)

When we lose our preoccupation with ourselves, we are amazed to see that the life in Christ is not rocket science. Whenever Jesus was moved with emotion for the condition of people, he took action. Jesus illustrated how this can work out in our lives in his parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite, the ones who knew the most about God, failed to act. The Samaritan, who supposedly knew the least about God, was commended by Jesus because he acted with compassion. Jesus tells us, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). The Apostle John summarized Jesus’ commendation of the Samaritan when he wrote, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18). When we obey Jesus’ imperative, when we say “yes and amen” to John’s teaching, we will grasp the simplicity of Micah’s teaching on doing justice and loving kindness.

My Takeaway: This is the life in Christ in a nutshell. Take a leap of faith, and embrace your right standing with God, and then go and do what the Holy Spirit shows you Jesus would do if he were standing in your shoes. (Which of course he is, since your leap of faith embraces the truth, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27b NRSV).