Jesus was once asked what the greatest, most important, commandment in God’s law was. He answered, “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. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:34-40). When referring to both of these commandments, Jesus says “There is no commandment greater than these” (see Mark 12:28-31). So when Jesus was asked about one commandment, the greatest and most important, he answered with two. Jesus never spoke anything without great wisdom and importance. By answering with two commandments, summarizing the law of the prophets, he already knew our hearts and was saying both are important. Some people seemingly want to follow one without the other, but you can’t do that if you truly follow Jesus. He stated both for a reason.
Let’s start with the first. Exodus 20 in the Bible gives us the famous Ten Commandments. The first ones in more detail talk about having no other gods, no idols, those that love God keeping his commandments, not taking the Lord’s name in vain, and resting on the 7th day because God rested after creating everything and made that day holy. There are other commands in the law, but Jesus quotes from the Old Testament which says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5 – Mark mentions “strength” as well). You can summarize the first commands with that as well as other parts of the law because God keeps repeating that those that love him keep his commands. Jesus says this in the New Testament as well. The commandments are not a set of legalistic rules to follow. It’s not a checklist for getting saved. You believe and are justified by faith and any works are the fruit of our faith. If you love God, you want to do what He says and please Him. It’s out of love and gratitude for God loving and saving us that we want to please God and keep His commands, not because we have to do these things. So besides not having other gods and loving Him, how else do you please God? He gave us commandments for not only our own benefit but for that of our fellow human beings. Jesus said loving your neighbor summarizes the law. The other commandments in Exodus 20 include honoring your parents, not killing, not committing adultery, not stealing, not bearing false witness against your neighbor, and not coveting your neighbor’s things nor wife. All of those things involve loving your neighbor. If you steal, kill, dishonor, slander or lie against them, commit adultery, or desire to have your neighbor’s things or wife you are sinning by thought or deed against your neighbor. If you do any of those things against your neighbor, you are not loving them. Your actions show either your complete lack of consideration for them or your contempt and utter disdain for them. Jesus, again, was not just speaking empty words and inventing a new commandment apart from those, but instead summarizing and emphasizing something God had already stated since the Old Testament times. “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:18). A key phrase to notice about the summarized second commandment is that Jesus said you shall love your neighbor “as yourself.” As in, Jesus was implying we already love ourselves. Man tends to be selfish. When the disciples were arguing about who was going to be the greatest of them, Jesus said the first shall be last and the last shall be first. People are often worried about getting the best parking spot, the largest piece of the pie, getting to the front of the line first before the crowd and so on. Nobody has to tell us to look out for ourselves. Jesus was telling us to look out for our neighbor and treat them as if they were us. Would you want those things in the commandments done against you? Someone to steal your property, lie about you, sleep with your wife and so on? No. So why would you do it to somebody else? Anybody who does those things either does not consider them, or if they do they don’t care enough to not do those things. Looking out for their own selfish interests or needs (real or perceived), they would throw others under the bus, stab them in the back, and do whatever it takes to “make it to the top.” Sad, but unfortunately people like that do exist. Pray for them, even for those that persecute you (see Matthew 5:44). That is truly loving your neighbor. How many people would want “payback” or “karma” against a person that has done them wrong? That has cheated them, stolen their things, lied about them, and so on. Yet Jesus said if somebody slaps you to turn and let them hit your other cheek and that if somebody steals your coat, to go ahead and give them your cloak also (see Matthew 5:38-40). Jesus said, “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27). Hard things to do in practice, but, “if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matthew 5:46). Even the Old Testament looks out for others. “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles” (Proverbs 24:17). Jesus was not speaking new commands into existence, but stating the most important and that if you follow those 2, you are basically set up to not break the rest. However, we all fall short of the glory of God and only Jesus was without sin, so we do end up breaking them. That’s why we need Jesus. Have you ever gotten mad at someone? Held a grudge? Found it hard to forgive a person? And yet God tells us to always forgive others, including those that hate us. When we pray, “forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25). None of us is perfect, and yet how many things does God forgive us for and we can’t forgive somebody else? God is merciful with us and He will have mercy on whom He wills, that is not for us to decide. God chose Paul who was killing Christians to become one of his greatest instruments in the faith. We don’t know if the person that did you wrong today will change by God’s grace tomorrow. If justice is due to the person, God already spoke on that too. “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil,’ wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you” (Proverbs 20:22) and “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19). So put away anger and malice, forgive others, pray for mercy, and ultimately put everything in God’s hands. The commandments, again, are not just a list of rules to follow, but guidelines for life. If everybody in the world actually followed them, we wouldn’t have things like rape, murder, theft, or even war. A lot of people today seem to think things are black and white, either or, and argue about many things. You have polemics on two sides debating, when often there is some sort of compromise possible. Sometimes it’s not either/or but both. We can learn from Jesus when he answered that these two (plural) are the greatest commandment (singular). It’s not one or the other that matters in all cases and circumstances, religiously without any exceptions, but instead both working together. They’re not mutually exclusive. You can’t truly separate one from the other; otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have referred to both as one command. How can you fully have one without the other? You can’t negate one and claim to have the other. How you wonder? Allow me to explain, if you will. Of the two greatest commands, let’s start with the first one. We are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love God above everything and everyone. Seek His kingdom first and all these things shall follow. I’ve heard people say we ought to make sure our vertical relationship with God is right as well as our horizontal relationship with our neighbor. Some even say the vertical comes before the horizontal. In a way, that is so. How do you serve others if your relationship with God isn’t right or serve others if you’ve got a terrible home situation? We should take care of that first. It’s like putting on your oxygen mask in a plane emergency first so you can help others before you pass out and can’t help anyone. That is what the world and modern culture would say anyway. However, psychological thought experiment. What if there’s a malfunction and only one mask drops? “Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor” (1 Corinthians 10:24). Then maybe God would want us to lose our life to save the person next to us? Though would that include a “terrible” person and how would we know if even Paul was saved? God’s our judge, not us. Maybe they would change. Our last words should then be something like, “Jesus wants you to take the mask!” And maybe they will be so shocked they’ll look into it and get saved, in an ideal world. They’d probably just shrug, think we’re nuts, and be like, “thanks dude, your loss.” Yet, we would still be doing the will of our Father, walking in love for Him and our neighbor, and it’d be in God’s hands if our life was miraculously spared anyway or if we’d be home with Him that day. Let’s return to loving our neighbor then. Our neighbor includes our families, spouses, and kids and these are often the people closest to us that we spend the most time with. How can we go out and serve strangers if something is wrong in our home life? If we neglect or physically, emotionally, or verbally abuse our spouse or children? That is not what true followers of Christ do. The Bible says for husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church (and vice versa) and for deacons to be married to one wife and manage their children and households well. If there are problems in your relationship at home, work to fix them. Otherwise, how can you try to take the speck out of somebody else’s eye when you’ve got a big log in your own (see Matthew 7:1-5)? And how can we truly love others if we don’t love God first? Then wouldn’t we be like the world and love only those who love us instead of loving those who hate us as well? There seems to be an ideal hierarchy. Love God, then spouse and kids, then neighbor. However, I don’t think that needs to be religiously followed at all times in that order because everything is intertwined. Life isn’t always as clear-cut. In some circumstances, our priorities will change for that moment or period of time, and that is okay. It’s even Biblical. Yes, we are to love God with our whole mind, heart, and soul. Sometimes, however, by loving your neighbor you are showing you love God. What? Yes, they are interrelated. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar. Anyone who does not love their brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). The Pharisees would pay tithes to the Jewish temple to be seen and praised by people, but would neglect to honor and pay their parents. They would claim to love God and be descendants of Abraham, yet they hated Jesus and anyone that was not “perfect” like them. Jesus talked about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, welcoming strangers, etcetera and said, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” and if we didn’t do it to them we didn’t do it to Jesus (see Matthew 25:31-46). They asked Jesus, “when did we not feed or minister to you?” Jesus said when they did not do it for the least of the brothers. So how we treat our neighbor, whether we do good or bad to them, whatever we do we are doing to Jesus. To God. It is either for God’s glory or to our detriment as one day we will be judged for our every action when Jesus separates his blessed sheep from the punished goats. Sometimes, God even has us put our neighbor before Him. Not above Him, as we still love God above everything and everyone. However, we cannot claim to love God if we are sinning against our neighbor. Scripture says that if we are about to leave a gift on the altar, but remember that our brother has something against us, to go and resolve that first before bringing our offering to God (see Matthew 5:21-26). Other times, God again reminds us that claim to love Him that we have to love our neighbor if we claim to love God. Otherwise we would be hypocrites like the Pharisees. Once, somebody trying to justify themselves asked Jesus to clarify who our neighbor is. Jesus then told the parable of the good Samaritan. A man is beaten and robbed, but the priest and Levite who are supposed to be serving and loving God pass by. The Samaritan who is supposed to be from a people that the Jews called enemies sees the injured man and has compassion on him, treating his wounds and paying a room at an inn for him. The neighbor was the one that showed the man mercy and Jesus said to go and do likewise (see Luke 10:25-37). This is yet another case where in loving our neighbor we do the will of our Father who says to love Him and our neighbor. One goes hand-in-hand with the other. There is a reason that Jesus named the two as the greatest single commandment, and yet he still has the hierarchy. Loving God comes first and loving your neighbor second. However we cannot claim the first if we neglect the second, and if we try the second without the first we are essentially trying to do it ourselves without God. We neglect prayer or reading our Bible and then wonder why we feel like we’re running on empty. Because we are not getting Spirit filled and led. Instead of “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), no wonder we sometimes get wiped out. God said not to worry about what we are to say because the Holy Spirit will call all things to our remembrance, but how can we remember what we don’t read and study? Faith comes by hearing. We need to put on the armor of God to be fully equipped to minister, preach, teach, serve, etcetera. We can only say we love God and call Him Father through the Holy Spirit and once we do, then we can truly love our neighbor. The fruit of the Spirit includes love, joy, kindness, patience, self-control… All things involved in truly loving our neighbor and as Jesus said, that includes those that hate and persecute us. The Bible provides us a set of guidelines for life, but God knows things depend on the individual people and circumstances. God says to honor the Sabbath, but also that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Whoever keeps or doesn’t keep a Sabbath or festival, we are to do all for the glory of God. He said to honor your parents, but the guy that wanted to bury his dad and follow Jesus was told to let the dead bury the dead. Martha was worried about many things like cleaning and preparing food etcetera, but Mary chose the most important thing. Does that mean cleaning or cooking are not important? No. As Ecclesiastes would say, there is a time and place for everything. But in that moment, Mary had chosen the correct priority. So it’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach as there will be exceptions sometimes. David, for example, once fed his people with God’s sacred bread offerings which were not meant for laypeople. God’s laws are like modern laws, written for ideal situations. If you are driving in a 45 miles per hour street, but suddenly a pedestrian decides to cross the road, you slow down or hit the break even though that is not the “correct” speed anymore. Why? Because otherwise you would kill them and their life trumps the speed law. A cop cannot give you a ticket for breaking the speed limit by going too slow or stopping when it was a necessary exception. It depends, but when in doubt as to which way you should act in a particular situation or scenario, pray for wisdom and discernment in your decisions. To conclude, let’s consider Scripture’s metaphor of the church as a spiritual body with Christ as the head. The hand and foot perform different functions, each just as important, and neither part can say to the other “I have no need of you.” Everything works together. Yet, isn’t the most important part our head? Without our brain transmitting the neural signals, we wouldn’t even be able to move our hand or foot! Jesus is still hierarchically first, but at the same time no servant is greater than the master and if he humbled himself we also must do the same. Nobody is more important than another. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ. God comes first, but God is also the one that sends us to love our neighbor, and by loving them we love Him. We can’t hypocritically say we love God without loving our neighbor. God said to love and pray for our “enemies” and those that persecute us. Everybody can love people that love them back, but who loves those that hate them? Yet God made us a new creation and gave us a new heart, so His commandments are not burdensome. We love because God first loved us. So my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, as Jesus said, love God with all your might and love your neighbor. It is more valuable than sacrifices, and if you do so, then you are not far from the kingdom of God (see Mark 12:32-34). Don’t argue about who loves more, better, or more correctly. Paul said some remain single and some marry and neither is “better.” We all serve God by serving our neighbor and we do it with our varying gifts. Don’t think that one way applies to everybody at all times. Love God and your neighbor to the glory of God. And if your neighbor does so a bit differently, remember that some are hands and some are feet, but we are all part of the same body. May God bless you and continue to work in and through us as we work to be salt and lights in the world. And if you do not yet know Jesus, I lovingly ask you to please seek him out. God is waiting, but we don’t have forever. I wish you well, but even more so, I wish you Jesus. Comments are closed.
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July 2020
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