Jesus said, If you love me, keep My commandments
(John 14:15). This was not a new idea
for His disciples. Hear Moses as he is
preparing the people to receive the commandments by which they are to live when
they enter the land:
Deut. 11:1: Therefore you shall love the LORD your God, and keep His charge, His statutes, His
judgments, and His commandments always.
Deut. 11:13-14: And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My
commandments which I command you today, to love
the LORD your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul,
then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and
the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your
oil.
Deut. 11:22-23: For if you carefully keep all these
commandments which I command you to do – to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast
to Him – then the LORD will drive out all these nations from before you, and
you will dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves.
We call attention to
this because Jesus not only gives the first
and great commandment; He gives the second which is like it. It is like the first in that it is
far-reaching. But it is second because
it rests on the foundation of the first.
The Law of Moses involved many statutes and judgments as to
how people would treat each other properly.
In the midst of those commandments we see the only other uses of the term
love in the Law of Moses:
Lev. 19:18: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The same phrase is
used twice (Lev. 19:34; Deut. 10:19) in the same context of Israel’s treatment
of foreigners. Jesus is saying that all
the laws about human relationships came down to one command to love them as
they loved themselves.
Now let us think about
this for ourselves. First, the New
Testament tells us that the law is fulfilled in the second command, to love your neighbor as yourself (Rom.
13:8-10, Gal. 5:13-14, James 2:8). Jesus
taught this in what we call the Golden
Rule (Matt. 7:12). We also are
command to love others. Second, note the
relationship of the two commandments.
The first requires love with all that we are. There is room for no other love but for the
LORD our God. But then what does He
command us? The One we love tells us we
must love our neighbor, our enemies, our spouses, our brothers and sisters in
Christ. We cannot love God if we do not
love others (1 John 4:20-21).
And one final thought. The Scribe, according to Jesus, was not far from the kingdom of God. Close, but not in. He apparently agreed with Jesus’ theology,
His answer. But entrance into the
kingdom requires receiving the King by faith!
Good theology should lead us to Christ but it is not the same as knowing
Christ.
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