THE THREE PROFOUND COMMANDMENTS

THE THREE PROFOUND COMMANDMENTS

BOB

As a child growing up there were three commandments of the Bible I was made to memorise. I wasn’t bothered with the third. If I should be concerned, it was with the first two. The first is love the lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. The second is like unto the first, love your neighbour as you love yourself and the third is husband love your wife as Christ loves the church and gave his life for it. Later in life I gave them my own tag, the three profound commandment of love. There is something that amazes me and the same time bothers of the three commandment. They demand something beyond the ordinary from anyone who is concerned with them. As a child I was not really concerned with any. I was only excited memorising them. This does not mean as a child I didn’t fight or quarrel with other kids in my neighbourhood – I did. But I wasn’t told I needed the “the love your neighbour as yourself” command. As Children we lived a free life. We fought almost daily and reconciled quickly as much. The years was increasing in number, I wasn’t fighting and quarrelling every day, only occasionally and yet I couldn’t reconcile whenever I had a clash with someone. Then the second commandment became a concern. I discovered that it was almost like the most difficult thing anyone can do. Question were arising in my heart that I couldn’t handle. I supposed my church leaders were keeping this command, so I envied them. I wish I could also. I remember a preacher saying, you have to take care of the second and third then the first won’t be a struggle. I’d to struggle to do this, it was a ‘make and break’ kind of. I just tried loving, putting up good smile with the guys on the street, had some courtesy, threw greetings to passer-by and help with some stuffs at home. It was boring. I knew my heart wasn’t involve, I wish it was. There was nothing I could do about it. How do I force my heart to love others? I   wanted to be me. Why should I give people the impression that I love them when I didn’t care a bit? I was sick with the love your neighbour thing and even ‘as yourself’ for that matter. How on earth will it be possible? One moment I was smiling and helping some kid, the other I was causing and beating up the child. Not to mention the resentment, anger, malice, strife and all that fill my heart. How would God want us to be Christian, go to heaven and he gives us such commandment? I was frustrated. After a Sunday service I went to my pastors (not the senior pastor). It was Sunday, the Sunday I saw the pastor, here the preacher was talking about love, and I was awake to get the whole story. He said the command to love is not for non-Christians. Unbelievers (sinners) can’t love. They don’t have the power to love. That was the statement that caught my attention. ‘You mean I’m a sinner’? ‘I’m not of cause’. This love thing is the only challenge… I’m keeping the rest of the commandments.

Bob: good morning pastor, I came to see you concerning something bothering me.

Pastor: bro. Bob, what’s it?

Bob: I don’t seem to understand the passage that says love your neighbour as yourself.

Pastor: how do you mean, you don’t need any interpretation to that, you should know it.

Bob: I know it sir, but I don’t understand it.  I mean I struggle to keep that commandment, and there are lots of things I do that defile it.

Pastor: bro. Bob, I presume you’re born again. Every one of us still faces the difficulty you’re facing. I understand the angle you are coming from perfectly. Don’t let it put doubt about your assurance of salvation. The power to love is in every one of us who are born. We have to exercise that power. Let me tell you, the flesh fights against the spirit and there are lots of struggle: the struggle against the flesh, against sin, against the media, against self and environment. All of these things war against the soul, and that’s where the struggling comes. Apostle Paul said ‘I beat my body and put it under subjection…’ that means he forces his body against it wish. The sinner does not struggle to keep the commandment of God, he does not simply keep it and can’t. For a sinner there is no struggle he swims in sin, he enjoys sinning. He is like a fisher in a river. It is only Christians that struggle because this flesh we put on is a weight. So you must understand, your struggle is not peculiar to you.

Bob: sir if I do understand you, from what you’ve said I don’t mine is a struggle though it is a struggle a kind of, I don’t think it’s the same thing. I can’t say I do have the power to love. I just want love because I’m aware and familiar with the passage (the pastor cut in gently and spoke sharply).

Pastor: bro. Bob I think I get the picture now. (I became more attentive, and curious to listen). Though I’m insinuating you are, when a sinner hears God’s i.e. when the word penetrates his heart, he is pricked and wants to react to that word. At that point the struggle is so great, and because there is no life in him yet, he hasn’t gotten the power to do the will of God. It is like that point when Christ shouted with a loud voice ‘Lazarus…’ Lazarus heard his name been called under the authority of Jesus but not until the next phrase followed ‘…come forth’ he was able to leave the tomb. It is also like Nicodemus who heard Christ spoke and saw the signs and wonders was pricked but he was not yet born again. So he went privately to see Jesus where he was told ‘you must be born again’.

So bro. Bob, what I’m saying is that you must be born again. There is a difference you can’t never know until you cross that thin line and that difference is huge. (My eyes were wet, waiting for that slight blink to drop tears. I was in a Christian community doing so much. I weren’t sure I was born again, in fact I was not because my life, as I know best to myself, couldn’t tell. I resolved, I’d to be born again. Ha, you mean I wasn’t born again and wanted to keep the commandment of God! I thought I must have been born again with the many years of being in the church, giving and doing Christian service. I didn’t wanted the pastor to notice my countenance, so I hung my head down to control my facial expression and let the tears get dry. Not that I was hiding something but after the pastor had done speaking, I felt a scale peeled off my eyes and suddenly I could see well. I couldn’t argue that I was a sinner though I was so told. My amazement was all these years I have been among Christians in school, church and at home and yet …)

Bob: thank you sir my question was answer. (I left without another word but not hurriedly. I guess the pastor must have notice something, my eyes were red)

                                                                             
                                                                                    ***

As soon as I stepped out of the pastor’s presence, I hurried home swiftly. The tears won’t let me get home. I felt a hole bored through my heart. My heart was bleeding like those nails were pierced into Christ palms and feet, I felt same in my heart. My bed was soaked with tears. I knew it was not a flash of lightening experience as someone would say. I knew it has come to stay. Something had happen to me, I was sure. All these years I was alive, now I was crucified.

Many years has past now, and the love of Christ and the power to love still resides in me. As the pastor had said there is actually a huge difference in crossing that thin line. Hold on, we are not done yet. There is yet another commandment of love to consider – the third one: husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church and gave himself for her. I have learnt some things on this area, but I think bro. James has it best because I’m not yet married, though I’m close to.

                                                                                                
                                                                                      ***

James

Barbara and I were married for twelve years. You won’t like to be caught addressing her as Barbara, she is Mrs. Barbara James and so loves to be known. But not until the last six months when had implicitly accepted to be called Mrs. Barbara without the suffix James. It was not really a major crash, we just separated and not the divorce.

I met Bob a couple of years ago in a dinner meeting, you could guess that meeting was not for couples, and he asked me to write on how husbands should love their wives.

Bob and I had been family friends before I met Barbara, I mean from somewhere close to teen. If there was anything I and Bob was known to share without grudging and quarrelling, it was the love of friendship. I’d and almost sliced Bob’s finger in an attempt to diligently cut a piece of meat when he was ten years three days old, and on my thirteenth birthday. On this particular joint birthday celebration we couldn’t pull enough resources together and you should know attendance was strictly by invitation. We both schooled at the same college but different disciplines.

One of a Sunday, Bob sat close to this fellow who he discover was struggling with the decision to go out for altar call. Bob quietly handed him a piece of paper with the write-up ‘why are you here’. He. Bob learnt later that the boy’s name was Abimelech and they both were in the same department. While Abimelech was away at the altar, Bob accidently saw his prayer card. Abimelech was owning two sessions’ tuition fees and grandmother was ill – she had caught the flu. Although the card belonged to Abimelech’s girlfriend, Bob erroneously enveloped some amount into the offering box and wrote on the envelope ‘to Abimelech’ three Sundays later.

Something happened later when Abimelech and Barbara went to visit her grandmother. She narrated how a young man had visited her earlier in the day. The boy prayed and dropped some flowers and provisions. Under her condition she could not express her joy. And when Barbara asked grandma who the person was, she replied ‘and that’s your husband’. After she and Abimelech had left the hospital, Barbara demanded that she needed some time off the relationship. She later learnt that about everything Bob did. She and Bob later became familiar and close. Bob, Abimelech and Barbara were attending Christ’s Brides community church until Bob left to Prima Vici College. Barbara couldn’t bear it that Bob was away, but she learnt that I and Bob were brothers, as they call us, we soon became friends. She spoke of him almost every day and nickname him J.boy (Jesus boy). I could see the admiration and sacrifice involved. When I packed into the apartment I saw he was praying for both Abimelech and Barbara’s salvation as well as others.

                                                                TO BE CONTINUED