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Day 2: Loving God, Loving Others
Reading: Matthew 22:34-40 (The Voice)
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the
Sadducees, a group of Pharisees met to consider new questions
that might trip up Jesus.
35 A legal expert thought of one that
would certainly stump Him.
Pharisees: 36 Teacher, of all the laws,
which commandment is the greatest?
Jesus (quoting Scripture): 37 “Love the
Eternal One your God with all your heart and all your soul and
all your mind.”
38 This is the first and greatest
commandment.
39 And the second is nearly as
important, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
40 The rest of the law, and all the
teachings of the prophets, are but variations on these themes.
The virtues of Infinitum are to love
God and love others.
Together, this is known as ‘the great commandment’ as
it encompasses all the meaning of the Old Testament. We want
love to characterize our lives.
And these loves are vertical – God – and horizontal –
people. And the
order is not coincidental.
First we love God.
And then we love people.
If we try it the other way around, it doesn’t work.
If we look to love people, we get tired.
Trying to love people in our own strength,
stereotypical humanitarian, well-intentioned approach to
caring for people, is unsustainable over the long-term.
Plus, God commands us, “You shall have no other gods
before Me (Exodus 20:3 NIV).”
Anything we put ‘before’ God is in the wrong order.
And, if we truly love God, then we WILL
love others. But
you see the elaboration by Jesus.
This is loving, ‘God with every passion of your heart,
with all the energy of your being, and with every thought that
is within you.’
This is so much more than the best human facsimiles.
You can put the most healthy, pure expression of love
you’ve seen on steroids to capture an idea of what this is all
about. The
Biblical word, ‘agape’ has these definitions (from
biblehub.com) = love, goodwill; affection, goodwill, love,
benevolence, esteem; moral preference.
So, let’s see how that looks.
We are commanded show goodwill, to
exercise benevolence, to esteem, to morally prefer God.
And then we are to show goodwill to
others, to exercise benevolence toward others, to esteem
others, to morally prefer others.
Impossible in and of ourselves.
But God is good.
And so, what God commands, God enables.
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