What is
the greatest commandment of God? This is the question posed to Jesus by the
lawyer in today’s
Gospel from the 15th Sunday of Matthew (22:35-46). Is this
passage familiar? It should be. We also read it on the Eighth Sunday of Luke
which typically occurs about mid-November. And Jesus responds by saying that we
should love God with everything we got. 100 percent. This commandment to love
God we will take has a given because Jesus Himself affirms it in today’s passage. Thus, the question I
would like to address is this: How do I love God? The answer, if I want to put
it simply, loving God is all about keeping His commandments. Jesus affirms this
directly no less than four times in the Gospel of John.
15If you love Me, keep
My commandments. (John 14:15)
21He who has My commandments and
keeps them, it is he who loves Me. 23Jesus answered
[Judas] and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will
keep My word”. (John 14)
24He who does not love Me does
not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who
sent Me. (John 14)
This
directly contradicts much of today’s
prevailing attitudes about love that thinks it is all about feeling good or
having a caring thought about someone. Keeping God’s commandments is all about
choices, decisions and actions.
However,
Jesus is not introducing a new concept here. The Old Testament has numerous
references about how to love God. The Ten Commandments were written on tablets
by God Himself and given to the great prophet Moses to give to the Israelites.
The first four tell us how to love God: 1) do not have other gods before Him,
2) do not make carved images and idols, nor bow down and serve them, 3) do not
take the name of the Lord in vain, 4) remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. In
other words, to love God He must be first and foremost guiding person in our life,
no material, man-made things can be more important than Him, whenever we use
His name it must be to glorify and praise Him and not to curse Him or others,
and we must not work and we must worship Him on His holy day, which for
Christians is Sunday, Kyriake - the Day of the Lord, the Day of Resurrection.
When
the lawyer tried to test Jesus in today’s passage by asking Him which is the
great commandment in the law (v.36), he is referring to this same Law given to
Moses. And Jesus replies, You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind (v.37)
which is a quote, not from the Ten Commandments, but from elsewhere in the Law.
It is from Deuteronomy 6:5. The passage that contains this verse also talks
about keeping the commandments of God and teaching them to our children:
1Now this is the commandment, and
these are the statutes and judgments which the LORD your God has commanded to
teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to
possess, 2that you may fear the LORD your God, to keep all His
statutes and His commandments which I command you, 3Therefore hear,
O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that
you may multiply greatly as the LORD God of your fathers has promised you. 7You
shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you
sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you
rise up.
Loving
the Lord with all our heart and soul is repeated in Deuteronomy 10:
12And now, Israel, what does the
LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His
ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your
heart and with all your soul, 13and to keep the commandments of
the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good?
In
Deuteronomy 30, this same language is repeated but changed slightly to say:
2and you return to the LORD your
God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your
children, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3that the
LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you. 6And
the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants,
to love the LORD your God with all your heart
and with all your soul, that you may live. 9For the LORD will again rejoice
over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers, 10if you
obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes
which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the LORD your God
with all your heart and with all your soul.
In
other words, God understands that we will inevitably fail to love Him, and that
turning and returning towards Him are also ways of loving Him.
The
love of God as learned in the Law and the Prophets is exemplified in the
persons of the Righteous Symeon and the Prophetess Anna, whom we commemorate
today February 3rd because they are integral figures in the Feast
of the Meeting of the Lord which we celebrated yesterday. In the Gospel account
(Luke 2:22-40) we learn that Symeon was just and devout and the Holy Spirit was
upon him (v.25). And because of this He was granted to meeting the baby Jesus
and hold Him in his arms when Jesus was brought into the temple by Joseph and
Mary at forty days of age. (vv.27-28) We learn that Anna was a prophetess and
that she did not depart from the temple, but served God with fasting and prayer
night and day (v.37). Thus, she also was granted to be one of the first to meet
Christ. No doubt, Symeon and Anna loved God.
We know
that loving God is only have the equation. The other half is to, as Jesus says
also in today’s
Gospel, love your neighbor as yourself (v.39). Again, we take it as a
given because Jesus reaffirms the commandment, but how do we love our neighbor
as ourselves? Of course, we are familiar with the Parable of Judgment that
Jesus tells in Matthew 25 that tells us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
visit the sick and the prisoners. But what are some other guidelines. Again, we
return to the Old Testament and specifically to Leviticus 19 because this is
the passage Jesus is quoting from when He says, Love your neighbor as
yourself (vv.18, 34) and it contains several instructions about how to love
our neighbor. Some are familiar because they were spelled out also in the Ten
Commandments, numbers 5 - 10 (honor father & mother, you shall not murder,
commit adultery, steal, lie, covet).
3Every one of you shall
revere his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths: I am
the LORD your God.
5And if you offer a
sacrifice of a peace offering to the LORD, you shall offer it
of your own free will.
9When you reap the harvest of your land, you
shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, nor shall
you gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10And you
shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather every
grape of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the
stranger: I am the LORD your God. 11You shall not steal,
nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. 12And you
shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God:
I am the LORD. 13You shall not cheat your neighbor, nor rob
him. The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you all night
until morning. 14You shall not curse the deaf,
nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear
your God: I am the LORD. 15You shall do no injustice in
judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the
mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. 16You
shall not go about as a talebearer among your people; nor shall you
take a stand against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD. 17You
shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your
neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. 18You shall not
take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your
people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the
LORD.
20Whoever lies carnally with a
woman who is
betrothed to a man as a concubine, and who has not at all been redeemed nor
given her freedom, for this there shall be scourging; but they
shall not be put to death, because she was not free.
26You shall not eat anything with
the blood, nor
shall you practice divination or soothsaying. 27You
shall not shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the
edges of your beard. 28You shall not make any cuttings in your
flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the
LORD. 29Do not prostitute your daughter, to cause her to
be a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry, and the land become full of
wickedness.
31Give no regard to mediums and
familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the
LORD your God. 32You shall rise before the gray headed
and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God:
I am the LORD. 33And if a stranger dwells
with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. 34The
stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you,
and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers
in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. 35You
shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length,
weight, or volume. 36You shall have honest
scales, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the LORD
your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37Therefore you
shall observe all My statutes and all My judgments, and perform them: I am
the LORD.
As we
can see, loving God and loving our neighbor, go hand in hand. They are interdependent.
Jesus said in Matt.25, As much as you did it, or did not do it, to the least
of these My brethren, you did (did not) do it to Me. This is demonstrated
further in the following Scriptural passages.
15So when they had eaten breakfast,
Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love
Me more than these?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You
know that I love You." He said to him, "Feed My lambs." 16 He
said to him again a second time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you
love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love
You." He said to him, "Tend My sheep." 17 He
said to him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love
Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third
time, "Do you love Me?" And he said to Him, "Lord, You
know all things; You know that I love You." Jesus said to him, "Feed
My sheep. (John
21:15-17)
17But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts
up his heart from him, how does the love of
God abide in him? (1 John 3:17)
20If someone says, "I love
God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his
brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not
seen? 21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he
who loves God must love his brother also. (1
John 4:20-21)
2By this we know that we love the
children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. (1 John 5:2)
In
conclusion, what are the benefits of loving God? Not that we do it for a
payback but loving God has its own rewards. Mainly, that is God will love us.
Not that He does not love us until we love Him but that in loving Him, we
become more aware of His love for us and we allow God’s love to penetrate our heart,
mind and soul and understand how tangible and powerful it is.
5Now hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by
the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
(Romans 5:5)
23Oh, love the LORD,
all you His saints! For the LORD preserves the
faithful, And fully repays the proud person.(Psalm 31:23)
10You who love the LORD,
hate evil! He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out
of the hand of the wicked. (Psalm
97:10)
17I love those who love
me, And those who seek me diligently will find me. (Proverbs 8:17)
21He who has My commandments and
keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be
loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." (John 14)
23Jesus answered [Judas] and said to
him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My
Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (John 14)
27for the Father Himself loves you,
because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from
God. (John
16)
28And we know that all things work
together for good to those who love God, to those who are the
called according to His purpose.
(Romans 8:28)
Source: http://stgeorgegoc.org/pastors-corner/fr-ricks-sermons/how-to-love-god-neighbor
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