In the Gospel of Matthew we have
an encounter being played out between Jesus and some of the religious leaders.
The leaders were trying to trap Jesus by asking the question "What is the
greatest commandment?" but what they got was a reply that silenced them
once and for all.
When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the
Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. One of their religion
scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up:
"Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most important?" Jesus
said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and
intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is
a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These
two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from
them." (Matthew 22:34-40 MSG)
From
my journal Dec 2010
I have found myself being drawn to these verses as the driving
values for my life. Love God and love others. But when I really dwell upon this
notion of loving, what does it look like in practice? How is it that I express
this sense of love? Maybe a more basic question is what is love? How does one
define it? I want to inject here that I am talking about the love of others,
not the love of things. I have to pause when someone asks me how I like my
iPad. The first thing that pops into my mind is that I love it. Do I really
love it? When I say I love it, what I mean is that it is a great tool for me
because it allow me to consume information from the Web in a way that fits me.
I don’t think that is a true definition of love, but because of the wide pool
of definitions for the word love, maybe it is.
I
want to take a deeper look at this passage in Matthew and unpack with you what
it might look like to put love into practice.
When
I look at love in the context of the passage above, I see that love has to
happen in a relationship. To love God I need to be in a relationship with God.
To love my neighbor I need to be in some type of relationship with them. You
can't love someone in isolation. Love is about doing, love is active - in 1
John 3 we read:
By this we know love, that he laid down his
life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone
has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart
against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love
in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
(1
John 3:16-18 ESV)
Love
is active and can only be carried out in relationship. The only love that can
be carried out alone is loving ourself (I'm talking about the narcissistic type
of love) and loving the world. To develop relationships one needs to spend time
with the other person(s) in the relationship. So what does that look like with
God and what does that look like with others?
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