Exodus 20:1-17, Love (2)

The importance of love.

·       Matt. 22:37-39/Mark 12:28-34:

o   Jesus answered, not only with the greatest but also with the second greatest.  It is the same word for love, agapao.  Our heart attitude toward our neighbor is to be the same as toward God.  How can this be?  Certainly, God is more important than fellow humans.  The answer to this question might be found in the words of John in 1 John 4:20 concerning relationships in the Body of Christ: If 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.  Jesus includes the second command, even though the scribe did not ask for it, to give meaning and substance to the first.  We likely have a tendency to “mystify” or spiritualize love for God since we can’t see Him.

o   Jesus is quoting from the Law of Moses in these two commands.  The first comes from Deut. 6:4-5; the second from Lev. 19:18. Again, the word for “love” is the same, the Hebrew ahab.  The Hebrew word at its root has the idea of “longing” after someone or something.  The first use of this term in the OT (i.e. the defining use of the term) is in Gen. 22:2, when God said to Abraham, Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there is a burnt offering.  God said these words.  And Abraham’s love for Isaac is a picture of God’s love for His own Son (Mt. 3:17).

o   In Matthew’s passage he adds, on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.  This is instructive.  In Matt. 7:12 Jesus tells us to do to others as we would have them do to us; for this is the Law and the Prophets.  Rom. 13:8-10 says he who loves another has fulfilled the law, and then Paul notes the second group of the Ten Commandments, those relating to others.  All these laws, he says, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.  Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.  James 2:8-11 makes the same point, that to love your neighbor as yourself fulfills the royal law according to Scripture.  These passages agree, that obedience to the second command fulfills the Law.  Yet, Jesus correctly says on both commandments hang all the Law and Prophets.  The Ten Commandments clearly show this.  The first four relate to our love for God; the last six to our love for those around us. 

o   In the same way that all the Law is fulfilled in love for God and one’s neighbor, we can say that #2-9 in the list of the fruit of the Spirit is a description of love, the first fruit.  What we are saying is that a practical description of “love” will take us all across Scripture.  Ultimately it will come down to a person: Jesus Christ, the Son of God!