Love As

 DEVOTION

1^ST SAMUEL

LOVE AS

1 Samuel 20:5-17

5 So David said, "Look, tomorrow is the New Moon festival, and I am supposed to dine with the king; but let me go and hide in the field until the evening of the day after tomorrow. 6 If your father misses me at all, tell him, 'David earnestly asked my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because an annual sacrifice is being made there for his whole clan.' 7 If he says, 'Very well,' then your servant is safe. But if he loses his temper, you can be sure that he is determined to harm me. 8 As for you, show kindness to your servant, for you have brought him into a covenant with you before the LORD. If I am guilty, then kill me yourself! Why hand me over to your father?" 9 "Never!" Jonathan said. "If I had the least inkling that my father was determined to harm you, wouldn't I tell you?" 10 David asked, "Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?" 11 "Come," Jonathan said, "let's go out into the field." So they went there together. 12 Then Jonathan said to David: "By the LORD, the God of Israel, I will surely sound out my father by this time the day after tomorrow! If he is favorably disposed toward you, will I not send you word and let you know? 13 But if my father is inclined to harm you, may the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if I do not let you know and send you away safely. May the LORD be with you as he has been with my father. 14 But show me unfailing kindness like that of the LORD as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, 15 and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family — not even when the LORD has cut off every one of David's enemies from the face of the earth." 16 So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, "May the LORD call David's enemies to account." 17 And Jonathan had David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.

NIV

This affirmation of their covenant reveals to us how life under God's power should be. We can see a life lesson in that one word of Jonathan's, “Never.” David asked Jonathan if he was guilty that, rather than Jonathan giving him up to his father, Saul, he should just kill him himself. That is when Jonathan voiced that, “Never,” because they were covenant brothers; in fact, Jonathan had David affirm his oath, out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself. That is the Old Testament truth of the New Testament. We noticed that God told Moses to tell the people many things, but one of them was to love their neighbor as themselves. Jesus told the rich young man who asked him what good thing must he do to have eternal life, and Jesus told him several of the commandments, but added, “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Then the greatest moment of Jesus' teaching that truth was when one of the experts in the law tried to test Jesus, asking him which is the greatest commandment. Jesus responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and he said that was the first and greatest commandment.  Then Jesus added the second one, “Love your neighbor as yourself”.  Jesus told him that all the Law and all the Prophets hang on these two commandments. This is one of the major truths we must live by. Of course, accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior is the very first thing we can do in order to have eternal life, which means being born again, having that old nature die, and being born a new creation by the power of God. But then, we can start to get sidetracked by the law, or commandments, or even our rules and regulations, either set forth by a local church body, or a denominational statement of conduct. Yet, Jesus said all the law and all the prophets, whatever is taught in any of that is true, but all that truth hangs on one attitude, Love. First, we must have the attitude in our hearts to love the Lord of God with all, not part, or divided, all our hearts, all our souls, and all our minds. That is all of us, every bit of us, without separating or dividing our love for God with any part of us. We cannot serve or love two masters. Sometimes this gets fuzzy because we live in this world and have so many distractions. We have to work, we need money to buy our needs, housing, transportation, food, clothing, the comfort things we want, and we might sort of separate our material life from our religious life. We use religious life because we might not actually have a spiritual life if we get too invested in material life. Yet, if we do love our Lord with our whole being, then everything in this life is from his hand. We see everything we have, everything we do comes from his hand upon us, and our spiritual life, our new life, our being born from above, from his hand, by the blood of Jesus, makes us this new creation. Because we love our Lord with our whole being, that turns our hearts, souls, and minds with love toward our neighbors. How can we have any attitude or behavior other than love toward others? Yet, that too seems difficult because we see some as not acting with kindness toward us, and that is not just in the world, but it is also in the church, yet we are supposed to love our neighbor just as we love ourselves. In other words, if we understand this correctly, it does not matter how we are treated; our response must always be love.