The Great Commandment

A lawyer from the Pharisees camp questioned Jesus about which is the great commandment in the Law. Jesus’ answer was, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

Love is introduced into our sinful world by Jesus Christ when the word became flesh and dwelled among us (John 1:14). We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). God is love and He is asking us to obey His Greatest Commandment by loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27). By relating to Him in obedience and love, I believe all of us can truly know the joy of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

However, loving our neighbors may not be easy at all. Even if he or she is a Christian, it can be tough because we all have turned our backs against God and strayed (Isaiah 53:6). We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), but listen to what Jesus is telling us – As Christians, we are to extend this love which we have experienced from Him to all of our neighbors. Everyone around us is a neighbor to us. Loving God and loving our neighbors are the foundations for all the Law and the Prophets.

We as fellow believers in Christ still have a long way to go before we can truly live out these two commandments entirely in our spiritual lives. I look back to what King Solomon had concluded in Ecclesiastes – The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

 

Fear God and keep His commandments…

 

Are we really fearing God and keeping these two great commandments which He has articulated clearly for us which are namely, to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves? Knowing these commandments in our heads but not living them through the application from our very own hearts can only demonstrate that we are actually no different from the Pharisees or the Sadducees, isn’t it?