THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT IS LOVE

Lonnie Bond, Washington

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.”

(Matt. 22:37-40) NIV.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

Love is such an easy thing to say today, we say: “I love you” but do we really love the way that Jesus loves? Do we just love the ones that love us? Do we have love and compassion for the addicted, lost, abused and homeless? Are we reaching out to our persecutors and enemies? Are we showing them the love of Jesus, His compassion for the weak, sick and poor?

In order to walk in Gods perfect love we need to strive to love as Jesus does, we must lay down our own pride, dreams, and self-interests. The little things that seem harmless hinder our relationship with God. We need to have the Holy Spirit purge our hearts of all things that are not desirable to God. We will never be perfect but He knows our hearts, if we are striving to be Christ like we will be better off than if we are not. It is a personal relationship that you have with Jesus only you can build that relationship and decide how far you want to take it. When you reach the point when you can truly love your enemies with a pure heart you have become complete in love.

The little acts of love are very important, like saying thank you to somebody that is rude to you. Smiling at an angry or sad person, giving someone a helping hand when we can see that they are in need. Not getting angry when someone cuts you off or pulls out in front of you. Listen to the Holy Spirit that dwells within you, and turn to the word of God to feed your spirit. The enemy hates when we strive to love as Jesus does, he will be right there to put a negative thought in our mind about that person or situation, you need to rebuke that thought. We must guard our hearts and minds with the word God. We need to read it every day to keep it active in our spirit, heart and mind.

In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul speaks of love, without it you have nothing! (Verse 13) Now these three things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest being love.

Webster’s definition of nothing: no thing, no part, one of no value or importance, not at all, something that does not exist, zero.

Love is such an important gift from God that we need not take it lightly! Love truly comes from the heart, without it we have nothing! Jesus says love your enemies so you cannot hate a person and love them at the same time, it’s the evil or wickedness of the world we must hate. It does not matter how much money, material things, faith, or trust we have without love you have nothing.

(1corthithians 16:14) Do everything in love.

Everything is another word that has no room for interpretation (it is what it is). God commands us to love we do not have an option.

1 John 4:19-21 is so powerful:

We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And He has given us this commandment: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

(Romans: 12:9) Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil: cling to what is good.

It does not say who ever loves God can love whoever they choose or only the ones that do something for us. It says must love his brother, which is a commandment.

Webster’s definition of must: used as an auxiliary especially to express a command, or necessity. Something necessary must is a very strong word there is little room for interpretation. Love must be sincere not superficial, not for gain. God knows our hearts and He knows when we our not sincere about love.

We as Christians need to be bold in love, showing people that we love as Jesus does. Imagine if you told someone how much Jesus loves them and they heard you talk about how you do not like so and so, or they see you being rude or mean to someone. They will say if that is how Christians are I don’t want anything to do with it and they will want nothing to do with Jesus. That is not our mission in proclaiming the gospel, if we are to be like Christ we must act like Him in every aspect of our life. Should we really care what the world thinks of us? They are the lost and deceived, controlled by the wants and lusts of this world. Paul says in Romans 1:16 he is not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Its time we stop being timid and worried about how the world perceives us.

If we do not show the world the love of Jesus how do you think they will see it? We pray for God to send out His laborers to bring His word of salvation, love and compassion to people.

Who do we think those laborers are? They are us the body of Christ!

(2 Tim: 1:7) For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and self-discipline.

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