Scripture Reading: Matthew 22:34-40
Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40
The most essential, God-honoring thing that we must do as a disciple of Jesus Christ is to love God and love others with complete devotion. It is more important than morality, more fundamental than doctrine, more valuable than personal sacrifice, more critical than knowledge, even more God-pleasing than faith! On the surface, you can look like a super disciple, but without love, you are just pretending to be a Christian. “If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2) Without love, our spiritual activities are merely a checklist that will ultimately leave us empty and disillusioned. We can do lots of good things without love, but being a disciple of Christ is not one of them.
For those of us who have accepted the call to follow Jesus, and tasted His mercy, love and forgiveness, our love for God is a natural response to His love for us. We are like the woman who washed Jesus feet with her tears and expensive perfume. Like her, when we experience the love and forgiveness of Christ, we respond by loving God. (Luke 7:47) (Do you remember that incredible feeling when you first believed?) But the love we have for God is not only an emotional feeling of gratitude. It is evidence of our salvation, evidence that something has changed deep inside us. The bible says if you know God, you will love him, for God is love. (1 John 4:8)
Before Christ, our allegiance was to ourselves. Oswald Chambers said, “the nature of sin is the self-realization that leads me to say, ‘I am my own god’”. But, when we finally begin to love God, really love Him, it is the result of knowing and embracing the truth that He is God and we are not! It is then that we can love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and have the kind of relationship that He desires to have with His children.
To love the Lord God with all your HEART is to get rid of the idols that have captured your heart and find your satisfaction in Him. To love the Lord God with all your SOUL is to stop striving, and fully embrace that your significance, purpose and meaning comes from Him. To love the Lord God with all your MIND is to block out the noise that is cluttering your senses, and allow yourself to be amazed by God’s infinitely complex creation and the depths of His Word. God wants to be the main thing in our life! He wants our affections, our emotions, and our intellect. That is why loving God is the first and greatest commandment!
But what about the second commandment - How do you love your neighbor as yourself?
We can’t force ourselves to love anyone, but we can invite God’s love to transform our hearts so that we can show His love to anyone we encounter, whether a complete stranger or someone we see every day. He empowers us to love others by giving us the Holy Spirit ‘who fills our hearts with His love’. (Romans 5:5). When Christ makes His home in our hearts we can really begin to love beyond ourselves. (Ephesians 3:17) What seemed at first to be an impossible commandment, becomes the genuine desire of our hearts and part of who we are.
To love your neighbor as yourself does not mean to love them instead of yourself. Some people avoid getting involved in other’s lives, because they fear they will have to give too much of themselves, or get too emotionally invested. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some believe they really are supposed to love their neighbor instead of themselves, and they end up spiritually and emotionally drained, with nothing left to give to anyone, including God. Neither one is biblical or God-honoring.
Jesus said to love our neighbors as ourselves. That means to love others with the same focus and energy that we lavish on ourselves. To love our neighbor as our self means to care enough to notice when they have a need, and care enough to do something about it. In the course of our normal lives there are opportunities every day to show the love of Christ. But how many of them do we really see? Or worse yet, how many do we see, but ignore? To love our neighbor as our self involves intentionality. We must actively look for the opportunities that God brings into our life. If you want to see them, God will show you.
John 13:34 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
Jesus said that love is the mark of a disciple. When you see someone in need, do you respond with compassion, or are you bothered by the inconvenience? If you truly love God, does it show in your love for others? I’m not just talking about acts of kindness. We can do good deeds and acts of kindness all day and still not love anyone! Helping others makes us feel good, and that’s great. But love takes it to the next level. In God’s eyes, to love means to deeply care about the person and serve them.
Sometime today, we will have the opportunity to love. The question is, how will we respond? Will we ignore it, or will we really love with the love of Christ?
DJS
© 2011 Inspired by the Word of God. Scriptures from New Living Translation
