Acknowledging the Power of Godliness

I started today in Matthew 5:43-45. Jesus sermonizes on Leviticus 19:18, " 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD." The message here was presumably that people had taken the law to mean you only had to be loving to your neighbor, but you could hate your enemy, which Jesus rebuked as being against the spirit of the law.

But, I wanted to go back and look at the original verse. I was again blown away by some of the laws and words from God in Leviticus. There are so many precepts that we use to inform our lives about what is "good" from the Law. Which reminded me of these verses from 2 Timothy 3: " 1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them."

The last verse is what keeps catching me, "having a form of godliness but denying its power." Looking through Leviticus 19, there are so many precepts that inform our lives and society today, but we have slowly and inexorably purged the power behind them, and have long since forgotten the imagery, the living metaphor of their meaning, from them. A few examples:

11 " 'Do not steal.
" 'Do not lie.
" 'Do not deceive one another.

12 " 'Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.13 " 'Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him.
" 'Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight.
14 " 'Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD.
15 " 'Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.
16 " 'Do not go about spreading slander among your people.
" 'Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life. I am the LORD.
17 " 'Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.
18 " 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

We take so many of these for granted. Well of course we shouldn't curse the deaf! Of course justice should be impartial! But would we really know that, hold to that, if it had not been written down and passed down to us? I think we "deny its power" to say we just would have known this anyways. I think God needed to have the Israelites write these down because it wasn't the norm, it wasn't part of the standard of what was Good in those days. Already in our society we are losing the standard, and yet we have it written in front of us.