As one year comes to a close and another begins, many of us reflect on our past goals and experiences. Maybe you planned to read the Bible more consistently than in years past. Perhaps you set out to read one book each month. Maybe you committed to a new exercise regimen. Perhaps you chose to continue your education. What were those things for you? Whatever they were, I hope that you feel a genuine sense of accomplishment—and of gratitude—as you look back on them. These are good things worth celebrating.
But you’ve probably noticed that most of the goals and resolutions that we all make are easily measured. (It’s hard to track something that isn’t quantifiable, right?) And this tends to give our goals a utilitarian quality. And while accomplishments matter, we can’t forget that we are not our accomplishments.
Instead, there’s another goal that I would encourage us all to pursue. One that isn’t overtly quantifiable but matters now more than ever. A goal that feeds and fuels everything else we pursue. That goal? To be the kind of person the world needs.
People Conformed to the Greatest Commandments
That sounds vague, I’m sure. But stick with me. When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus said that it is to love God with all of our heart, mind, and strength. And immediately, he followed it with the second: to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). Upon these two commandments—loving God and loving others—hang all Scripture’s moral and ethical demands.
And this is what the world needs from us, now more than ever: People who are conformed to these commandments.
To be people whose character is shaped by our love for God, seeking to know him to greater degrees through his Word. People who watch their lives and doctrine closely, recognizing that while God’s Word might be infallible, we are not. People who are conspicuously committed to the truth and justice, even when it risks alienating our perceived ideological allies. Who practice compassion and hospitality toward all people, especially those who might misunderstand or malign us. Who refuse to dehumanize others and see those we disagree the way God does first: as people made in his image. People who see conviction and kindness as inseparable rather than in opposition.
This is what I want to challenge myself—and you—to pursue in the year ahead and every year to come. As the people around us become less and less familiar with anything resembling authentic Christianity, we have an opportunity to them what people who follow Jesus look like. To give people who are often lonely and starving for meaning a better picture than the caricature social and traditional media creates. People who need to know that we actually care about them, and that the better story we have to tell is truly better.
And it is not something we can do on our own.
People Shaped by Community
If this is the kind of person we’re meant to be, the kind that the world needs us to be, we need help. We need one another, in our local churches, to pursue this goal because we are shaped by our communities. If we are to “consider one another in order to stir up love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24 NKJV), we need one another. We need one another to love as Christ has loved us (John 13:34-35).
This is why the Bible places such a great emphasis on our being together, something it says we are not to neglect (Hebrews 10:25). The life we are called cannot be lived in isolation. The story we have to tell is one of being welcomed into a family. And for us to share that, we need to experience it too.
None of this is easy, of course. Relationships involve risk. Unfortunately, we will hurt one another. We will sin against one another. We will struggle with the temptation to withdraw. But if the our community is one that experiences safety in the gospel, the risk is worth it. So don’t give up when it gets hard. Be honest about the difficulty. Trust others with it if you can, and see what the Lord does.
So what is the kind of person the world needs us to be—the person who, if we belong to Jesus, we each should want to be? A person conformed to the greatest commandments, and a person shaped by living in community.
That’s the kind of person we should all strive to be. That’s the kind of person the world needs us to be, even if no one realizes it. And that’s the kind of person I want to be—and I pray that you will be too.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
