The Swampland of Personalities

In a previous post, I asserted that obedience to God’s Word is essential to being filled with the Spirit. That is something that is easy to say, but it is very difficult to do on a regular basis. The commands of Scripture may sound simple enough at first, but there is often a snag caused by our human nature (the flesh) which multiplies the difficulty of keeping the command. This is precisely why we must be filled with the Spirit to be what God designed us to be.

The “Greatest Commandment” provides a perfect example of what I mean. When the Pharisees were attempting to trap Jesus in a blasphemy, they asked Him which was the greatest commandment. He responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The Pharisees had no problem with this – at least the first part. Since this is the core of the Shema, their principal tenet, they assumed they were okay on that.

Having failed to get a strike on the first roll, they tossed another question at Him: Who is my neighbor? Jesus answered with one of His most well-known and often repeated parables: the Good Samaritan. A man, presumably a Jew, was on the road to Jericho when he fell among thieves who beat him, robbed him, and left him for dead. The first two to come upon him were Jews of ostensibly good religious standing. Each passed him by. The third passer-by was a despicable Samaritan who helped the man without restraint.

It was Jesus’ turn to trap the Pharisees saying, “Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor to the one who fell among robbers?” They had no choice but to pick the Samaritan. Ick! they thought, and thus failed the Greatest Commandment test. The Pharisees would have held dogs, pigs, and rats in higher esteem than a Samaritan, yet Jesus made one the hero of the story. If you look at Jesus’ ministry on earth and read His teachings, you could sum it all up by saying that to truly love God you must love His children – all of them, especially the most unlovely. He couldn’t have made it more plain than when He said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ explanation of love for everyone was most shocking; He said kingdom people would love even their enemies. In the global village we live in today, Americans don’t really have any personal enemies. There are nations who seem to be waging a trade war or committing digital espionage, but few of us feel animosity toward any group of individuals. Do we? What about blacks who hate whites or gays who hate straights or poor who hate rich? If statements on social media are any indication, there are people everywhere who fall short of the command to love their “enemies.” And Christians are not exempt from this charge.

If I didn’t trap you in the list in the last paragraph, what about the guy who cut you off in traffic the other day? What about the self-important politician who thinks the rules don’t apply to her? What about the conniving coworker who takes credit for your work? What about the next-door neighbor who plays his music so loud you can hear it inside with your house closed up? What about all the arrogant, selfish, nasty, inconsiderate, mean people who populate your world? Can you honestly say that you love them?

What about those people in your church? You know the ones I mean. Somebody once said that the church would be a great place if it wasn’t for the people. We not only have to love those people, we have to serve alongside them. In case you are thinking Jesus had it easier, look at the bunch He chose as His closest associates. He had a money hungry tax collector, a couple egotistical fishermen, kleptomaniac treasurer, a major doubter, and in general a ragtag group of seriously dense non-listeners.

When Jesus was told by Pilate, that self-important little politician, that he could have Jesus crucified, Jesus responded, “You would not have any authority over me unless it was given to you from above.” Jesus wasn’t cowed by the power of Rome standing before Him. He referred everything back to the will of God and rose above the “swampland of personalities.” (I stole that phrase from Tozer.) You may try to argue that this was not out of love for Pilate; however, you cannot miss that it was out of love for the world He came to save.

You get to choose the personalities of your friends and your spouse. Beyond them, your children, your coworkers, your fellow pew-sharers, your neighbors are going to be who they are going to be. You have to love them in spite of what you may consider to be character flaws. And you cannot do that in your flesh. The only way you can honestly love the swamp creatures in your life is by the power of the Holy Spirit in you. The kind of love God commands, agape love, is not natural human love; it is “shed abroad in our hearts” by the Spirit.

When you love like you are supposed to, you are acting out another command: be filled with the Spirit. As I wrote previously, that means to put yourself in submission to the Spirit to do what only He can do through you. That also ticks another box: being led by the Spirit. Chuck Swindoll once said that living the Christian life isn’t difficult; it’s impossible – impossible without the help of the Holy Spirit. I believe that as we are conformed to the image of Christ – another desire of God for us – our swampy personalities are cleaned up, straightened out and we will become the best version of us; we become what God created us to be.

I have said before that both natural talents and spiritual gifts must be used to advance God’s kingdom on earth. We are mistaken if we think the natural and the spiritual (supernatural) are separate. In Rumors of Another World, Philip Yancey put it like this: “Nature and supernature are not two separate worlds, but different expressions of the same reality. To encounter the world as a whole, we need a more supernatural awareness of the natural world.” Being filled with the Spirit gives us that awareness. Being led by the Spirit allows us to rise above the swampland of personalities and love like Jesus loved.

Related Posts: Character v. Personality; Character Counts; Stupitegrity