The Great Command To Love

I love my family! I love ice cream of various flavors! I love mildly warm days with lots of sunshine when I can lounge on the patio and watch the world go by! I love warm covers on a cold winter night! I love people who are friendly and people I know love me! Those are just a few of the things I love.

May I add to the list an obnoxious Sunday school child, someone who lies about me, a scruffy looking man who doesn't smell good, or a person who abused me as a child? Wait a minute! I do not see, in any of these, attributes that make them easy to love! It has been said that loving the world is no chore. It is that miserable guy next door who is the problem. Loving God and our neighbor is the very heart of biblical religion and the essence of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

The Ten Commandments are a love command addressed to God's chosen people. He had redeemed them by His grace and made an exclusive claim upon their worship. It was a covenant love; I do something for you, and you do something for me. God would love the people, and the people would love the Lord with all their hearts. God would redeem them from slavery, and the people should have no other gods. The idea was that human love would respond in radical obedience to God's redeeming love. Thus the Great Commandment of Matthew 22 compels us to love the Lord with everything we have and all that we are.

In the unsanctified life, this kind of radical obedience is not possible. An unsanctified heart is an idolatrous heart. God is in the life, but He is not the only god. Martin Luther observed, "Idolatry is the sin of any heart in which God does not rule alone. The lurking self-idolatry of the unsanctified heart creates a host of idols - unholy ambition, greed, lust, and soon -before which we foolishly bow down and waste ourselves."

Part two of the Great Love Commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. That's good, if our neighbors can stand that much affection! A.K. Braken said, "Some people seem never to have discovered that the world is chiefly populated by others!" Someone else once said that the fellow who is deeply in love with himself should get a divorce!" God is saying, "Divorce yourself from self, and put the good of others above your own good." That includes the unlovable.

In Matthew 5:44, Jesus says, "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you."

Perfect love is not a feeling. We can't make ourselves love that way. The forgiving love of Christ on Calvary demonstrates for us that kind of love. Jesus, being without sin and the incarnate love of the Father lived out in the flesh, was able to demonstrate that love for us. He made it possible for us to posses perfect love through His atoning sacrifice. A new covenant was instituted through Christ. We receive forgiveness of sin, we receive the witness of the Spirit, and the law is written on our hearts. Total submission to the will of God in our lives, and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, acknowledges God's supremacy and our need for new mercy every morning. It is not perfectionism which leads to legalism, but perfect motive which enables us to fulfill God's perfect plan.