Matthew 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard how
he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. 35 One
of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would
show him up: 36 "Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most
important?" 37 Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your
passion and prayer and intelligence.' 38 This is the most important, the first
on any list. 39 But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well
as you love yourself.' 40 These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law
and the Prophets hangs from them."
Food for Thought!
We may well say that here Jesus
laid down the complete definition of religion.
(i) Religion consists in loving
God the way we are. It means that give to God what He gave you; love him the
way God made you. That is why the greatest and first command is also the
fairest. It teaches us: we can and should only love God according to what
he has given us and made us. The emphasis here is on the word YOUR: You
must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and
with all your mind. God made us different and would not be fair if
He expected me to love him as you do, or vice versa. I can only
love God with all MY heart, all MY soul, all MY mind. The same to
you: you can only love God with all YOUR heart, with all YOUR soul,
and with all YOUR mind.
In practice we are saying, that
not everybody prays with the same devotion. For instance, in general,
women are more religious and devoted than men. And God would be unfair if
He expected men to love him with a woman’s heart, soul and mind. Or vice
versa. Nobody gives what they don’t have! And everybody should give
according to what they are and have. God will judge each one of us
according to what He made us and gave us. Thus, You must love the Lord
your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your
mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.
(ii) Religion consists in loving
our neighbor. It means
that our love for God must issue in love for men. But it is to be noted in
which order the commandments come; it is love of God first, and love of man
second. Why? Well, because it is only when we love God that man becomes
lovable. There are some people out there that are unlovable; there are people
we love only for God's sake. Without God, some people are simply not worth our
love.
Another thing to note and do is
that the first man to love is YOU. Sometimes we forget this basic truth. Let's
look again at Jesus' answer:
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.'"
Do you notice that the verb
"love" appears three times? There is love of God, love of others, and
love of yourself. For Jesus, true love must express itself in three dimensions.
These three dimensions are (a) love of God, (b) love of neighbour, and (c) love
of oneself. The first two are positively commanded; the last one is not
commanded but presumed to be the basis of all loving. The commandment to love
your neighbour as yourself presumes that you love yourself.
No one gives what they don't
have! You can't give love to others if you hate yourself; you can't be nice to
others when you have a bad day. Do you realize that when you have bad day, you
are nasty to people? You can't smile at people when you're sad. But, the day
you're happy, you'll treat everybody nicely. We don't shout at people when we
are happy. In other words, you treat others in as much as you treat yourself;
you love others in as much as you love yourself. Jesus is saying, Be happy and
everybody around you will be happy; and when everybody is happy, God is happy
too. For the glory of God is man fully alive.
So, in theory, love of God comes first, then neighbour, then
self. But in practice, love of self is first, then of neighbour, then of
God. When we love ourselves we will love our neighbour, and when we love our neighbour we love God.
1 John 4:20
If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating
his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If
he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he
can’t see?
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