“And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31
The Greatest Commandments. These are scriptures we have heard over and over again. Most likely a memory verse from Sunday school that you read and recited so many times that it has really started to lose its meaning.
So what does it really take to follow The Greatest Commandment and then to love our neighbor as ourselves? A change in heart. To really fully wholeHEARTedly love God with everything we have and to really fully wholeHEARTedly love others, we must realize that this life thing isn’t just about us.
How do we go about “breaking our heart”? Changing it so that we con love others like we are directed to do in Mark 12? First off, we have to realize that the people we meet are not just people, they are souls. They are souls needing to know the love of their Savior, Jesus and also needing to know the love that we as Christians can and should show them. As CHRISTians, it is our duty and our privilege to show love as He would. Jesus tells us in John 15:12, “This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” How did Jesus show His love for us? He died on a cross to save us from our sins. John 3:16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
So how can we share this love that Jesus provides? Let’s think about another verse that we probably have memorized- The Great Commission. Matthew 28:19-20 tells us “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
So how do The Great Commission and The Greatest Commandment really come together? Essentially it’s that if we love God as we are supposed to in the Greatest Commandment, then our heart will be changed. With this changed heart, we will love others as ourselves. Since we love others as ourselves, we will want them to go to Heaven. Since we want them to go to Heaven, we will go and share the gospel and make disciples of all people.
Furthermore, Jesus tells us in Luke 6:32, “If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them!” In Matthew 5:46-47 we are told “If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that.” So what is Jesus telling us here? Break out of our comfort zones, go into ALL the world, be nice to everyone we meet. Our “neighbors” are not just our friends or those that love us. Our “neighbor” is anyone we come in contact with and we are to love them and treat them not just as we would our friend but as we would ourselves.
Christianity is not a set of rules we are to follow. It’s not a don’t do this but do this commitment. Christianity is a commitment to put on Christ in baptism and to follow Him in everything we do. If we look at Christianity as a rulebook, we will fail every time. Instead, we have to have that change in heart. Once we do, everything else will follow suit. We will want to follow Jesus in everything we do, we will want to run away from sin, and we will want to love others as Christ loved -and we will.
Abbie Willingham
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