A brief prayer is offered that you can add to your daily
prayers this week. The scripture is from our Sunday Service Bulletin. We
continue a seven Sunday series on “Making Loving Disciples”.
Gospel Reading- Luke
10:25-28
25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him
to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law?
How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength
and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered
correctly; do this, and you will live.
Devotion: Making
Loving Disciples
The “lawyer” in the text is likely not a litigator like we
might think of today but a scribe or scholar of Mosaic Law. The use of “test”
does not necessarily mean hostility but, in translation, he could be just
asking Jesus’ opinion. Because the scholar used “teacher” we can believe that
he did not think of Jesus as a prophet or the Messiah. Now, rather than answer
the question, Jesus used a counter question regarding the Mosaic Law. In this way,
the lawyer was not evaluating Jesus’ answer -- it was the other way around! The
answer that was given by the lawyer, matches almost exactly what Jesus had said
in Matthew 22:37-40 and in Mark 12:29-31. In fact, Jesus also says in Mark 12:
31: “There is no other commandment greater than these.” So, as we try to follow
our Great Commission and make loving disciples, love is a major component of
our work. We need to be more like Jesus, who loves all! Love works!
We pray: “Lord make
me more like you. Amen”
