LOVING GOD AND OTHERS

LOVING GOD AND OTHERS!

Matt 22:37-40

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

           This response from Jesus was prompted by a question from a lawyer. A lawyer is interested in the law so he asks which of the many laws on the books was the most important.

“This was not a new question, for the scribes had been debating it for centuries. They had documented 613 commandments in the Law, 248 positive and 365 negative. No person could ever hope to know and fully obey all of these commandments. So, to make it easier, the experts divided the commandments into "heavy" (important) and "light" (unimportant). A person could major on the "heavy commandments" and not worry about the trivial ones.” (from The Bible Exposition Commentary. Copyright ©  Used by permission.) Jesus answers the question simply but keeping the two imperial laws would be anything but simple.

Love God supremely! Jesus includes every part of man in the act of loving. We are to love Him with our heart, soul, and mind. The heart includes all our thoughts and feelings. The soul is the Greek word psuche and literally means breath. It refers to our spirit. The mind is dianoia and refers to deep thought. It includes imagination and understanding. By this time most of us have failed test number one.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Neighbor is from the Greek plesion and the root is pelas which literally means nearby. It is hard to love someone in any meaningful way who is not close by. I have friends scattered around the country and throughout the world. I love them but I can’t give any practical expression to that love because they are distant. I have a very dear friend who is now buried beneath an eastern blizzard. I can’t love him by helping him shovel his walkway.

As thyself! This makes the impossible even more so. It makes love very personal and even more practical. The common activities of hygiene I do for myself every day. Would you perform these duties for a friend if needed? Would you comb their hair or brush their teeth? How about a sponge bath? Would you select food and feed it to them? “As thyself” covers a lot of territory!

Dear Lord, let me engage all my parts in loving you and help me to allow myself to be inconvenienced in loving and serving others. AMEN