This is one area that has seen many
debates not only in Christianity but across different religions globally. How
do you truly love God. Someone would even ask how to love someone you do not
see?
In some cases among Christians this is
one issue that has kept many confused or even frustrated. Could you even
imagine being in bondage trying to love God as one being in an abusive
relationship. I have seen many being either criticized or chastised for not
loving God enough from pulpits or any religious platforms. I always wonder how
in the world that could make someone fall in love. Talk about whipping you to
be in love.
If there were any group of people who
lived their lives everyday continually to please God to prove their love, it
would be the Jews. These were the ones who God gave the commandments and
ordinances through Moses. You could not really preach morality to them as a
gentile because they always had something you were missing.
But they met a man called Jesus who
challenged their thinking and philosophy about to the very roots. Here was a
man whose lifestyle communicated the goodness of God but was attracting the
worst of sinners. The life in him healed the sick and raised the dead. With all
he did there didn’t seem to be much about rules because there was always
constant access to him.
So the religious leaders in Israel
decided to ask Jesus what was the greatest commandment. His answer has actually
confused many of us but it was meant to bring them to the end of themselves.
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
the Pharisees got together. 35 One
of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in
the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest
commandment. 39 And
the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’40 All
the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:34-37
It’s important for you to know that
they were not asking Jesus because they wanted to know but they were looking
for an occasion to trap him.
Secondly please note the 2nd question they asked him “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” the
context is IN THE LAW. His answer
was based on what they asked him.
Now I will attempt to show why it was not
given to be kept because it couldn’t.
The 1st greatest commandment: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your mind.’ This commandment has been broken by all men.
There does not exist any man that can keep it. When the law was given it was a
challenge to man against the full and righteous holy standards which is far
higher than the ways of men.
The law was not given to Israel for them to
prove their holiness but to show them their nakedness and spiritual
deficiency. Even the best of them David
failed at keeping this one. So the law became a reference point for the devil
to condemn men because they always fell short.
3 For what the law was powerless to do because
it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned
sin in the flesh, 4 in
order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who
do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Romans 8:3-4
The 2nd greatest commandment: ‘Love
your neighbor as yourself.”
Is it possible for you to love your neighbor
if you don’t love yourself. You cant give what you don’t have. The 1st
commandment already made men feel condemned and miserable. How could they now
love their neighbor when there was no acceptance in them. The Pharisees and
Saduccees were a good example. They couldn’t love the tax collectors and
sinners like Jesus because they couldn’t give what they didn’t have.
Jesus already had the love of the father in
Him. The father pronounced His love even before he started ministry. So
ministry became an outlet for him challenge that fatherly love to anyone he
met. There so many miserable homes today because the parents did not receive
love from their earthly parents. They just passed on what they received.
According to Romans 8 quoted above you would
realize God’s plan in salvation. God condemned sin in the flesh so that all the
righteous requirements including the 2 above might be fulfilled in us by Jesus.
Now I want you to see what Jesus called his
own commandment and not the commandment.
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I
loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you
keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s
commands and remain in his love. 11 I
have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be
complete. 12 My command is this: Love
each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater
love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
John 15:9-14
First of all you can’t keep the commandment of love without first
understanding the love of the father. Jesus described his love as the love of
the father. Paul said that the love of God has poured out in our hearts by the
Holy Spirit in Romans 5:5
The revelation of the love of God is one of the essential roles of
the Holy Spirit in our lives. You cannot love God without first having the
revelation of the love of God. The love of God is not about keeping rules and
regulations if it were so then the law of Moses would still be relevant now.
Jesus said keeping this commandment would bring about joy in your
life. Jesus his burden is light. Keeping this commandment would be just as
natural as breathing.
Based on the scripture above Jesus stated His commandments in
clear terms: “My command
is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
We are to love based on how he loved us. So the question is how
did he loved us? Jesus gave the answer in the next verse.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for
one’s friends.
His love was his sacrifice on the cross as our
substitute. His love was about how God commended his love to us while we were
still sinners. It is an unconditional love.
When you begin to realize the Father’s unconditional, unmatched
love for you, you will also find loving those around you very easy. When we
comprehended His love for us, loving others became absolutely effortless. This
knowledge teaches us how to love, for “Herein is love, not that we loved God,
but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1
John 4:10).
When Jesus overcame the devil in the wilderness, He did it by
every word that proceeded from the mouth of His Father, and the last words of
His Father were, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew
3:17). Satan immediately questions whether or not Jesus is the Son of God, and
he noticeably drops the word “beloved” (Matthew 4:3). He never wants you to
remember how much the Father loves you, and the Father wants you to never
forget it.
So many today would want to prove to the devil that they are
Christians. They are caught up trying to prove their love for God with a
performance based Christianity. All God wants you to know is that you are
accepted in the Beloved.
A revelation of His love for us expands our ability to love
others, thus causing us to fulfill His command to love. The scripture further
explains that when we know the love of Christ, we will “be filled with all the
fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).
This is why it is so beautiful that the Apostle John repeatedly
refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved in the book of John which he
wrote. It does not mean that Jesus loved him more than anyone else, but that
John recognized how loved that he was. God loves you know more or less than He
loves anyone else, but you should recognize his love for you and you will walk
in His benefits.
