One Job

Today's Scripture

Jesus, at the beginning of His ministry, sets some high expectations:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me

because he has anointed me

to bring glad tidings to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

Oh, is that all? In reality He will far exceed these expectations. He will do all of this and will give himself for the forgiveness of our sins. He will endure everything for us. The people who heard Jesus read these words from the prophet Isaiah knew that it was not empty speech. Here was their reaction: "And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth." The word 'gracious' grabbed my attention and so, knowing that it was not the original word used, I dug into it. The Greek word is charitos - and it means 'grace' the very specific grace by which God turns our hearts to Jesus and build in us the capacity to love Him and love others.

Jesus was coming to love us, and people could sense it - their first reaction, their natural reaction was to be amazed at the loving words that He shared. This was before their greed and envy would lead them to push Him to the brink of death. But make no mistake, He came to love and to teach us to love. Listen to what the Apostle John says in his first letter: "If anyone says, “I love God,”

but hates his brother, he is a liar." Wow, OK, that's pretty clear.

As so many things are in following Christ: simple, but hard. The way we will show our love to God is by loving others - simple as that. Our prayer, our disciplines, our devotions, our worship and our actions should all be oriented to loving others. Jesus had ONE JOB - to love. In turn, we have one job - to love. We may not be capable of the many things in the prophecy of Isaiah, but we can bring glad tidings. We can also help to set prisoners free - those who are imprisoned by their sin, guilt and shame. A prisoner is never set free by reminding him of what he did wrong. He is set free by loosening the bonds, and by showing the way out.

Jesus is the loosener of the things that bind us. He is the way out. Each day we should consider at the outset of our day: How will we love today. How will we loosen someone's bonds? How will we bring glad tidings?