“Good fences make good neighbors” #5g

 The proverb "Good fences make good neighbors” comes to us from Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”. The saying conveys to us a message other than its actual meaning because it is meant to be taken figuratively. The author uses irony to stress the point that fences do not make good neighbors. The poem is actually in defense of not putting up fences that indeed do separate us from our neighbors. His point is that fences alienate us rather than bring us together. The irony in my short story is that a fence actually did bring my neighbor and myself together once again as friendly neighbors, but a far greater lesson was learned about what it truly means to be a good neighbor. 

 Neighbors, we all have them and there is no way to avoid them. With some we have good relationships and others not so good. What once separated my neighbor and myself with some hostility on both sides, has now brought us together once again as friends. Our fence that we shared in common had seen better days and was beyond being on its last leg. There wasn’t really much holding it together. It simply needed to be replaced. It bothered me to look at it each and every day, so I was on a mission to do something about it. My neighbor and I weren’t on good terms anymore and had digressed into giving each other the cold shoulder. We both played this silly game of blowing our leaves onto each others side on our own respective gardening days. Somehow our frustration with each other was ping ponging back and forth once each week as our debris moved from one yard to another. 

Talking to my neighbor was something that I had dreaded. I just didn’t want to deal with the confrontation. My first attempt at attaining a resolve for a new fence was to try a subversive tactic by asking my wife to talk to his wife to get the ball rolling. She wasn't interested. My wife said to me, "you're just going to have to go over there and talk to him!" I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. The next thing I thought of was to catch his wife out front one day as she was watering the yard hoping that I could use here to get to him. The opportunity soon arose and I took full advantage of it. After greeting her out front one evening, I explained to her that by replacing the fence it would be good for both of us. Thinking that she would heartily agree with me, talk to her husband, and get back to me with the go ahead. Rather, instead she came back to me with, "I spoke to my husband about the fence and he is willing, but you’ll have to talk to him about it." Well, there I was back to square one. I now had to confront him directly, which I so stubbornly did not want to do, if anything was going to happen with the fence. 

 A few months later we both happened to be out front and we looked over at each other and nodded. It seemed like a friendly gesture from both of us. He then shouted across the yard and said "what about the fence, do you you want to do something about it?” I was a bit taken back as we would not even look at each other let alone speak. It was the perfect moment, and I had no choice but to embrace his offer. You see, deep down inside I wanted to mend things between us, but I was unwilling to confront the matter head on and meet him face to face. I wanted to get the fence replaced, but I needed him to partner with me. It meant that if there was no direct contact with him, there would be no new fence.

Suddenly, at that moment we struck up a conversation. We asked each other what had gone wrong between us over the years, yet neither of us really had an answer. It was quickly agreed upon that it was best to let the past go and move forward. No sooner than the conversation had begun we gave each other a hug and everything was ok. It was time to lay down our leaf blowers and let that which divided us go. Within months the fence was built as we partnered together on the project. Mending the fence allowed us to mend our relationship.

The lesson for me in all of this went far beyond letting go of some past grudges, rekindling a friendship, and getting a new fence built which I will have to admit was my primary objective. I have since learned something about being a good or loving neighbor. In this situation being a good neighbor was definitely not something that was going to come from me. I was simply not willing to step outside of my own self interest and reach out. Whatever had come between my neighbor and myself didn’t really seem to matter to me. I had just figured that I was right and he was wrong.  

I have since discovered that we are called not to look to ourselves when it comes to loving our neighbor, which I will concede is usually my first natural response. I am beginning to understand the concept of being a good neighbor only as I look to the greatest of all neighbors. God who was willing to meet humanity face to face by actually becoming one of us. Jesus Christ was born into our world as a man, not with pomp and circumstance but lowly and humble as a servant. He confronted man in his sinful nature. He lived a sinless life and was willing to be crucified on a cross to deal with our sin problem once and for all. The sins of the entire world were paid for in His suffering and death. In what Christ did for us, He became the greatest neighbor ever known to mankind. "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8

 Rather than building a fence between Himself and us, God removed the barrier that once separated Him from us. He laid down His life to rescue us from our wayward sinfulness by removing that wall, the wall of sin that no longer stands between us. We are now seen by God through the lens of Christ who has won for us the forgiveness of our sins, hope, and eternal life for all of us who believe. Jesus our great redeemer and neighbor has come to draw us unto Himself by His great work. And now, only as I am in Christ can I now know what a good neighbor truly is.

In Christ we are called to look to Him who was the ultimate neighbor, the one who got neighborliness right. The perfect neighbor, obedient to the Law at every point and sinless in all His ways. Even in His final moments of life, He performed the ultimate act of neighborliness in his suffering and dying, then rising from the dead for us. Jesus Christ laid down His life for all neighbors. For all of us who have not loved each other as ourselves. For all of us who have slandered and gossiped against our neighbors, who have stolen from them, been dishonest with them, and have murdered them in our hearts of hatred. For all of us who have been unwilling to reach out of our comfort zone and lend a helping hand in time of need to help protect our neighbor’s name and reputation, their life and marriage, and to help them guard their property and possessions. 

 Who is our neighbor?

Now, who is our neighbor you might ask? Is he simply the person next door that we do or do not get along with? Of course he is, but he is much more than that. Our neighbors extend far beyond the reaches and boundaries of our property line. They are all sorts of people: co-workers, extended family,teammates, teachers, customers, doctors, gardeners and many others. They are also the ones not so readily seen: the homeless beggar, the fatherless/motherless child, the hungry, the neglected, the sick, the poor, the widowed, the elderly. Look around, your neighbor is all around you. He is that person who needs a helping hand. He is anybody who might need you.

         Centered in Christ  

Christ must remain at the center, and everything in life spins out from Him. Everything must begin in Christ and flow out of him crucified and risen, from how we approach and read the Scriptures to how we live out our faith, including our works - how we view and treat our neighbor. If Christ is not at the center of our works our neighborliness, then our love of neighbor will amount to nothing more than legalistic demands worked under the Law. Good neighborliness begins in Christ and must end in Christ. Christ befriended us by His neighborly love toward us in His death and dying, we now express that love to our neighbor, and Christ gets all the glory. God is calling us to live outside of ourselves, in Christ by faith, and in our neighbor by love.

 The work of the Law and the Gospel

It is critical for me at this point to share what I have discovered that will help in our understanding of who we are as Christians, as sinners and saints. We are not all sinner, nor are we all saint. The truth is that we are both at the same time. The Latin phrase is “simul justus et pecator”, being at the same time both righteous and sinful. We are sinnersaints living under both the Law and the Gospel. A life lived in tension between the sinner in Adam according to the flesh and the Saint in Christ according to the spirit. The sinner lives under the Law by fear and coercion, the Saint by the Gospel in trust and faith. Understanding this simple key point will completely change the way we view ourselves as Christians who desire the things of Christ, yet still do the things of the sinful nature.         

“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”   Romans 7:21-25

The Law reaches further into our lives than we think. The Law, as written in the Ten Commandments, not only tells us what notto do with our neighbor "thou shall not", but in its positive form it tells us what we areto be doing before before God and our neighbor. The Law, as well seeks to protect a gift from God. For example, the Fifth Commandment tells us to “not murder” and aims to protect the gift of life. The Seventh Commandment tell us to “not bear false testimony against your neighbor” and aims to protect the gift of one’s reputation. In other words in just these two commandments we are required to defend our neighbor in his life and his reputation. You can figure out the rest.

The Law works to instruct us in God's righteousness and unchanging will according to which we are to conduct ourselves in this life. Yet, Christ alone is the only one who has ever demonstrated God’s holy will here on earth and He did it by His perfect adherence to the Law and His sinless life. It’s a strikingly different story for us. We are not in alignment with God’s will because of our sinful nature, the Old Man - Sinner. The Law’s purpose is not to make us better people before God simply because it can’t. It has no power to do so. Though it can have a limited effect upon us in the civic realm, it can only instruct us in what God’s perfect will and rightness looks like. But gives us no power to perform it. Of coarse the Law does instruct us as to what good works look like and yes it can curb some of our outward behaviors, but the Law cannot change or renovate the heart. The Law cannot motivate us to do good works. The Law cannot make us truly good neighbors. That alone is the work of the Gospel. 

The primary function of the Law is to exposes our sin that it would be brought out into the light. The Law works to accuse us of our sin and declare us guilty as sinners before God. It amplifies our sin by revealing sin in places that we never thought existed so that sin might be “recognized as sin” and “might become sinful beyond measure”. The Law's intention is not to give us life or make us better people, rather it reveals our inability to save ourselves and improve upon our own sinful condition.

 The Law shows is that we can't keep it no matter how hard we try, regardless of what spiritual disciplines we put into practice. It forces us to look outside ourselves. We are driven away from our own self efforts and turned now by the Gospel to seek our savior, to trust in Christ.

 SinnerSaint

Because of the sinful nature (Old Man/Sinner), there will always be a part of our own selfish interests in our attempts to be neighborly. We do not always have our neighbors best interest at heart. According to our Old Man/Sinner, our works are done grudgingly by coercion under the Law and they have the dirty fingerprints of our sinfulness all over them. Yet, according the New Man/Saint in Christ our good works naturally flow from the Gospel through the work of the Holy Spirit. They are a reflection of Christ in His love and kindness toward us.

 The Gospel declares the Christian holy and righteous in God’s eyes. That is we are already deemed righteous in God's sight on account of Christ. We now have the mind of Christ. We are a new creation. This (New Man/Saint) is now led by the Holy Spirit by faith unto good works. The New Man/Saint in Christ is no longer driven by the Law compelled to be a good neighbor as is the Old Man/Sinner under the Law. The New Man - Saint is now led by the Holy Spirit, by the Gospel in Christ to meet the needs of his neighbor. So by faith, trusting in Christ - not under the demands of the Law - we may gladly love and serve our neighbor with a glad and cheerful heart. 

“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” Galatians 2:19-21

The Christian in his New Man/Saint lives by the Spirit now demonstrating the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. These are not a list of marching orders, what is demanded of us under the Law, “Against such things there is no Law”. Rather, the Fruit of the Spirit are natural occurrences wrought in the Christian by faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. Fruit is not commanded to grow on trees, rather it is the natural by-product of a fruit tree. It’s what fruit trees do. They produce fruit! The New Man/Saint in Christ is not demanded to produce fruit or do good works by the Law. Rather, he produces fruit because that’s what the New Man in Christ does. He does good works! This is the work of the Gospel.

If our works are worked by the Old Man in the flesh they cannot please God. But when done by the New Man in the Spirit by faith they are good and pleasing to God. Works worked by the Old Adam are demanded of us under the Law. They seek to earn God's favor, look for man’s approval, and desire some kind of reward. The Old Man hears the Law as his accuser for violating it, for not being able to keep it. He hates the Law because it always accuses him and demands of him what he cannot do. He is told to love his neighbor and then he grudgingly goes about it. 

On the other hand, works done by the New Man in Christ gospely (according to the Gospel) are free from the obligation and constraints of the Law. They are the natural fruit flowing from faith. The New Man lends a much different ear to the Law. Since he is a “new creation” and now has “the mind of Christ”, he gladly accepts it. “He meditates on it day and night.” The New Man delights in the Law as he sees who he is in Christ, because Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. But remember the Law has no power to motivate one to do good works, that alone is the work of the Gospel. The Gospel liberates us from the demands of the Law. It gives freely, demands nothing, and expects nothing in return.

 Being Neighborly   

The bottom line is that Christ kept the Law perfectly, we have not! And we don't even get credit for making a good effort. It's a pass or fail system, and we all fail. So, now because of Christ the Law is fulfilled in us, and His righteousness is credited to our account. Christ was the perfect neighbor, we are not. That's why we must be in Christ for good neighborliness to take place. God’s love has rained down upon us in Christ, and that very same love now splashes over onto our neighbor. In Christ, God’s love comes to us vertically and then flows through us horizontally to our neighbor.

Our focus must be right, Christ first. Are we giving in to the Old Man/Sinner compelled under the Law out of obligation, seeking to meet our neighbors needs driven by fear and motivated by merit and reward? Or are we moved by the Gospel trusting in Christ and resting in His work, freed from the burden of the Law, and now serving our neighbor by faith with a glad and cheerful heart?

Yes, Robert Frost is correct. It’s not fences that make us better neighbors, rather it is a lack of them that does the trick. Jesus so dramatically demonstrated this in His suffering and dying for us to forgive us our sins, who once and for all removed the sin barrier that separated us from God. And now in Christ that very same barrier that separates us from all our neighbors is torn down. God’s love in Christ working through us can now move us across boundaries to reach out and touch our neighbor in kindness, love, and charity.      

Believe it!

 10-25-18