He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Jesus made that wonderful statement on the greatest of all the commandments when he said: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:37-39)

Reflecting on that the other day it came to me how we measure our love by what we do for our neighbor. Are we praying for them, visiting them when they are sick, bringing them meals, or helping them in times of need. These and many other ways we can tangibly see how we express love for our neighbor. This is a most excellent thing ... unless we forget the first and greatest commandment in favor of the second.

Remember that greatest commandment? To love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Do we do this? What does it mean to love God? Jesus reminded us in many places, but one in particular was John 14:15 where he told us that if we love him we will OBEY him. Unfortunately our culture teaches us to do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, and that perhaps we can pull it off without any consequences at all. Certainly we don't need to obey God, after all he wants us to be happy and free to do as we please, right?

That line of thinking follows from a pagan thought process that all of life is about ME. My happiness, my peace, my prosperity. It is a lie from Satan and from our corrupted nature. The only true freedom and happiness that we can have in this life comes first from being saved by God and then from living a life that he desires for us.

Face it, left to our own brilliance, things rarely work out well in the short run and never in the long run. Think you can make it on your own without God? Good luck. At some point man's wisdom, man's solutions, man's science and medical genius all fall short. Without God there is no hope.

God designed the universe and all that is in it. He knows what is best in life for you. He designed a way of life that rises above the foolishness of man. Wouldn't you like to enjoy that rather than head for another failure?

You see God told us at creation that we were to be fruitful and multiply, to govern over this earth as his representative over all of creation that he might be glorified. As such it is foolishness to try and do it any way other than his way. He gives us all of the Bible and it's moral law to show us how to govern over creation and how to govern our own lives.

We can't know how to love him or how to love our neighbor if we don't know what the Bible commands. He shows us and tells us what real love is. Not the watered down selfish version the world sells us, but the real thing. If we don't do it his way, if we aren't obedient to the whole teaching of the Bible, then we are slapping God in the face.

We might have our arm around our neighbor loving him, but what if our other hand is slapping God in the face? Do we really love God, or do we choose to ignore his clear teaching. He gives us laws, commands, principles and precepts by which we can know what to do in each and every situation of life. Let's begin to learn them today and to live it, showing God that we love him because we obey him!