Tuesday, February 11, 2020

LOVING IN THE RIGHT ORDER


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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘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.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:34-40

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked Him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but Him. To love Him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

And from then on no one dared ask Him any more questions.

Mark 12:28-34

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

If there was one central emotion found through the scope of the scriptures, it would be love. If you don’t believe that, look in any bible concordance and see how many verses in God’s word contain the word.

It was at the heart of what is the most well known verse in the bible, John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Yes, we find grace and mercy and forgiveness in what God willingly did to save His beloved people but at the heart of the choice was love. It was the catalyst for everything else.

Turning toward Jesus, the one and only Son God gave to bring us salvation, here’s what He had to say about what His Father had sent Him to do:

“As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love. 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. I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know His master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends.” John 15:9-15

Jesus had said that He was one with God, His Father, and as we see here, that applied to love. God so loved the world but He also loved His Son deeply. He proclaimed so at Jesus’ baptism which happened at the very start of His ministry:

As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:16-17

God loved His Son and in turn His Son loved His Father and all those His Father loved. The depth of that love was so incredible that Jesus referred to the very people He would die in the place of as His friends. His willingness to be sacrificed to pay the price for the sins of mankind constituted the greatest love possible, a love known as “agape love”.

Now the title of this devotion is “Loving in the Right Order” which lends to the suggestion that love is orderly. In other words, it follows a certain pattern in order to be what it is.

This means that love needs to have a starting point, an origin, and that starting point is God. Consider these verses:

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us… We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:8-12, 19

Love didn’t originate with mankind. It started with God who expressed His passion for His people through His Son who in turn showed the Father’s love by willingly dying in the place of everyone, for all sinners and we all are.

People then, based on the love of God and Jesus, are to love one another, only knowing what love truly is because of the love they have received from the Father and His Son.

Love indeed follows a given order and this isn’t just a New Testament concept. For as we turn to our scripture passages for today, we find Jesus, fresh off teaching the Sadducees about resurrection, being questioned by a teacher of the law. Look again at these words from Mark’s Gospel:

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked Him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but Him. To love Him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

And from then on no one dared ask Him any more questions.

Here, a Jewish man with the reputation of being an expert in Mosaic law asks for Jesus’ opinion on what He viewed as the greatest commandment. Now, keep in mind that God has issued many, many commandments so there was a lot to choose from and the task was made even more difficult by the matter of ranking any one command as more important than all the others.

But as we see, Jesus was prepared with answers and those answers were not only grounded in Mosaic law but centered on the matter of love, orderly love.

First, Jesus quoted the Book of Deuteronomy while offering what He viewed as the greatest commandment:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Deuteronomy 6:4-5

The greatest commandment was anchored in loving God, not just in part but in whole. In other words, we are to give God all our love with all we have. We have to invest all that we are, physically and spiritually, for then and only then can we fulfill the second commandment, which Jesus draws from the Book of Leviticus:

“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” Leviticus 19:18

When we love God first, with all our heart and soul and strength, then we can love as God loves because His love will become our own. This love pulls us away from Satan’s urgings to seek revenge or bear grudges, and points us to grace and mercy and forgiveness which are the byproducts of love. When we love God fully, then we will appreciate the fullness of the love He has for us, and then we can in turn extend that fullness of love to our neighbors, to all we come into contact with.

So how well are we doing when it comes to meeting these two commandments?

When we look at our world today and the divisiveness we see, my thought is that we have a long way to go to get to the place where God wants us to be.

What’s the way back?

I believe it’s pretty simple. It requires us getting back to basics and centering our attitudes on love, first realizing that we only know of love because God and Jesus showed us what it is, and then loving the Father and Son with all that we are and all that we have, just as they have loved us.

When we truly commit to this, then and only then, will we be able to love one another as God intended. And when we finally get that we need to love in the right order, then we will in turn find the world we live in become a more beautiful place, a place inhabited by people who treat one another lovingly and, in doing so, please the very Heavenly Father who loved them first.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
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