TWO commandments on obedience to which our relationship with God depends, is that we must believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another enough to help meet the needs of each other.
This was the core of the message Reverend Sandra Hazell delivered to a hushed congregation at the St Lawrence Anglican Church, House of Prayer by the Sea, recently.
She explained that to believe in the name of Jesus Christ meant believing in the whole nature and character of Christ, to believe He is the Son of God, that He stands in relation to God in a way no other person in the universe ever stood or ever can stand, that he is the Saviour of our souls and He can perfectly reveal God to humanity.
Likewise, the Anglican preacher said the commandment given by Jesus Christ in John 13:34 “to love one another as He loves us”, was a sure way to determine whether we were really disciples of Jesus Christ.
As the waves rushed to the seashore at St Lawrence Gap that warm Sunday morning, Hazell urged the congregation to love each other with the same selfless, sacrificial, forgiving love with which Jesus loves us.
“When we put these two commandments together, we find the great truth that the Christian life depends on: right belief and right conduct combined. We cannot have the one without the other.
“There can be no such thing as a Christian love of God without a Christian ethic; and equally there can be no such thing as a Christian ethic without a Christian love of God.
“Our belief is not really belief unless it issues in action, and our action has neither sanction nor dynamic unless it is based on belief.”
Preaching on the fifth Sunday of Easter, Hazell said people “cannot begin the Christian life until we accept Jesus Christ for what He is; and we have not accepted Him in any real sense until our attitude to others is the same as His own attitude of love”.
To strengthen her biblical viewpoint, she added: “When you see your brother in need and have enough to give him of what you have, is to follow Christ. To shut your heart and to refuse to give is to show that the love of God which was in Jesus Christ has no place in you.”
She said people could find plenty of opportunities to show forth the love of Christ in the life of others every day.
“This may call for the simple expenditure of money we might have spent upon ourselves, to relieve the need of someone poorer. It is, after all, the willingness to surrender that which has value for our own life, to enrich the life of another.
“If such a minimum response to the law of charity, called for by such an everyday situation, is absent, then it is idle to pretend we are within the family of God, the realm in which love is operative as the principle and the token of eternal life.”
The minister reiterated that if people loved God, they would keep His commandments to love and help each other.
“Fine words will never take the place of fine deeds, and no amount of talk of Christian love will take the place of a kindly action to a person in need, involving some self-sacrifice. For in that action the principle of the Cross is operative again,” Hazell said.
She made reference to Jesus’ deep, profound, perfect love for mankind which resulted in His death on the Cross and urged her congregation to imitate Christ by loving and giving sacrificially.
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