When one of the Pharisees asked Jesus, “Which command in the law is the greatest?” (Matthew 22:36) he received an answer that pretty much defines the rest of the Bible.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command.” (Matthew 22:37-38)
But wait, there’s more…
“The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” (Matthew 22:39-40)
So, God wants us to love Him first and foremost, but then we need to love everyone else as ourselves? That’s a lot of love. I mean, we love ourselves enough to go out of our way to accomplish what we want. What if we were the same way with others?
These two commands go hand in hand, creating, as Jesus said, “the Law and the Prophets.” If we truly love our Lord God, then we’ll keep to the commandments he wrote in Exodus, as well as the Law he has scattered about in the Bible. If we truly love our Lord God, we will love all of Him, you know, the entire Trinity? We won’t just choose to love God the Father, as a few religions do, and ignore God the Son and God the Spirit.
If we’re following His commands because we love Him, we’ll follow the second command, which means that we need to love others as ourselves. This one’s hard for most of us. We tend to want to do things purely for our benefit, as opposed to the benefit of others. We could be a blessing to others, but instead we choose to sit back and try and pick and choose what portions of the Law we want to follow.
What would happen if we all made these two commandments our top priority?
I’d like to leave it at that for now, but I will be following up on this one a couple more times, because these verses are taken way out of context sometimes, and they shouldn’t be.
Your Brother in Christ,
Phillip
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