God's Greatest Challenge: Love One Another
We love, because he first loved us. If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.
1 John 4:19-21
Jesus teaches us the Great Commandment is that we are to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul.
Our commitment to God is to be total, all-encompassing, and even all-consuming. Whatever we think, whatever we say, whatever we do, is to be thought, said, and done with God uppermost in our mind.
As a commandment, this is easily apprehended. We can easily grasp what is required, even though many will fail to follow through on that requirement. In any given moment, we will be forgetful of God. We will be vain, selfish, arrogant, even greedy.
Yet Jesus does not merely teach us that we must love God with every part of our being. He adds another commandment that is like it, co-equal in importance: we must love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
I have commented before that we cannot love each other or ourselves unless we first love God. We cannot build each other up, encourage each other, guide each other, unless we are committed to that which is right. We cannot inspire each other to holiness if we do not understand what it means to be holy. Before we can do any good to one another, or be good for one another, we must first seek out God, seek out what God wants, and seek to obey God’s Law.
Unless we do that, we can not have even the slightest clue about how to love either our neighbors or ourselves.
Yet if we do not love our neighbors even as we love ourselves, we cannot love God. If we do not put uppermost in our thoughts that we must be good to one another, and do right by one another, we are not seeking God and we certainly are not seeking to be mindful of God’s Law.
We must remember that the commandment to love our neighbors even as we love ourselves was not created out of whole cloth by Jesus. As was always the case, Jesus was citing God’s Law as it was given to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Jesus’ teaching was not an innovation or a novel understanding of God’s Law, but a reminder of what God’s Law has always been, and that God’s Law has not changed.
God’s Law has not changed, and God’s Law does not change. People change—people come and go, kings rise and fall, but God’s Law remains, fixed and constant for all time.
God’s Law has always been that people are to care for each other and be good to each other. God’s Law has always been that people are to show compassion towards each other. God’s Law has always been that people are to inspire each other to holiness and righteousness in all things.
When God lamented the wickedness of the world in Genesis 6, He lamented how men’s thoughts were constantly directed towards evil—directed towards ways to hurt and harm their fellow men. Before the Flood, the people of the world sinned grievously, but it is clear from Genesis 6 that these grievous sins in large measure involved mistreating others, and engaging in misconduct involving others.
Before the Flood, men became wicked and turned away from God by not loving their neighbors as they love themselves.
When God determined to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, He sent two angels to warn Lot of Sodom’s impending doom. When the people of Sodom saw the new arrivals, they immediately pressed hard against Lot’s door, demanding he send the two angels out for what is generally understood to be serial rape at the hands of the Sodomites.
Before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, men became wicked and turned away from God once again by not loving their neighbors as they love themselves.
The greatest evil men can do before God, it seems, invariably involves mistreating each other.
Even today, the greatest demonstrations of evil we see in the world involve people doing hateful things to other people. The proof of that fills the evening news on a daily basis.
Even today, the most heart-warming stories we see either on the news or across social media involve people doing kind and generous things for other people.
If we genuinely wish to care for other people, if we genuinely wish to show love and compassion towards other people, we absolutely must begin by seeking out God and striving to be mindful of God’s Law. If we do not do that, we will never succeed in caring for other people, and we will never be able to show love and compassion towards other people.
If we genuinely wish to seek out God and strive to be mindful of God’s Law, we must begin by caring for other people, by showing love and compassion towards other people. If we do not do these things, we are not seeking out God nor striving to be mindful of God’s Law.
Perhaps this is why Jesus presented both commandments as being co-equal in importance when asked to state the greatest of God’s commandments. God’s Great Commandment to mankind comes in two parts: one part is that we love God, and the other part is that we love each other. We cannot separate the two parts, and so we cannot love God if we do not love each other, and we cannot love each other if we do not love God.
Straight away this challenges many of our common approaches to right and wrong, our apprehensions of good and evil. Most significantly, we cannot simply write off other people as irredeemably evil:
If we do not strive to bring the vilest of sinners back to God, we are ourselves drifting away from God.
If we do not strive to shine God’s light upon all who are suffering in the darkness of sin, we are neglecting them even as we are joining them.
If we do not practice forgiveness towards all who do wrong, we reject the forgiveness God has promised us.
If we do not accept the forgiveness God has promised us, we cannot truly forgive others.
The love of our fellows is the love of God, and the love of God is the love of our fellows. The two are not merely inseparable, they are one and the same.
God’s Great Commandment is without a doubt God’s greatest challenge to us!
My prayer this day is that I will daily be inspired to rise up to this challenge. My prayer this day is that I will cultivate within myself the capacity to love others by loving God, trusting that my capacity to love God by loving others will likewise be increased. My prayer this day is that I will move into God’s Light by shining that Light upon all who are suffering in the darkness of sin.
My prayer for you this day is that you also will daily be inspired to rise up to this challenge. My prayer for you this day is that you also will cultivate within yourself the capacity to love others by loving God, trusting that your capacity to love God by loving others will likewise be increased. My prayer for you this day is that you also will move into God’s Light by shining that Light upon all who are suffering in the darkness of sin.
God’s Great Commandment to mankind comes in two parts: one part is that we love God, and the other part is that we love each other. We cannot separate the two parts, and so we cannot love God if we do not love each other, and we cannot love each other if we do not love God.
The love of our fellows is the love of God, and the love of God is the love of our fellows. The two are not merely inseparable, they are one and the same.
God’s Great Commandment is without a doubt God’s greatest challenge to us!
In this day and age, this is more relevant than ever. Good one, Peter!
You’ve been up most of the night following the news reports of people slaughtering each other in Iran, so you well know that loving your neighbor is easier said than done. But here’s a thought that I find helpful:
In quantum physics, at the level of existence where the tiniest of particles come into being, these tiny sub-atomic particles dancing in and out of existence are literally all One. It’s just one big sub-atomic Field, where nothing is differentiated from anything else until the pattern of energy that we call a “particle” comes into a stable pattern. So all of matter, all of life, in some sense are “one”. Our separation from each other is something of an illusion, existing only in the physical world that we perceive. The metaphysical belief is that once we are in the pure energy pattern of Souls, we are all united again - in some way that we can’t quite grasp as human forms. This is why the commandment to love one another is so fundamental - loving ourselves, loving each other, and loving God is all the same thing.
Jesus was right: we must love one another as ourselves, and as we love God.
Bless you for your profound thoughts and amazing eloquence, Peter!