Because we are a people who love ourselves more than we love others, we
are failing. Our marriages fail, our relationships fail, and our churches
fail.
A Pharisee, an expert in the laws of Moses, asked Jesus: "Which is the greatest commandment in the law"? 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 neighbour as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matt.22:34-39).
Today, we have inverted this law. We get married because we want to be loved, not because we love one another. We attend church to get blessed by God, not to bless Him. We want to be happy; we want to be healed; we want deliverance; we want to have friends. Do we go because we love God who created us, feeds us, and cares for us? Do we love Him because He first loved us?
I fear for God's people today. This inversion of the greatest commandment has resulted in chaos in personal and community life. It is failure in home and church. The loss of love produces quarrels; quarrels produce separation and division. Because we love ourselves more than we love our Creator, we pick out Bible verses which tell us what we want to hear.
The 10 Commandments were given to Moses to show man what sin is, but without love for God and others, we cannot keep them!
Jesus' new commandment to love one another makes Him the "Word of life" (I John 1:1) which was what His beloved disciple, John, called Him. John also says of Him, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...the Word became flesh and lived for awhile among us...for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:1,14,17).
We have a responsibility to keep Jesus' new commandment to love. John again writes, "The man who says `I know him' but does not do what He commands is a liar and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys His word God's love is truly made complete in him" (I John 2:4-5).
In Deuteronomy 17, Moses tells of the curses which would fall on those who failed to obey God's commandments. Sometimes such people were stoned or hung on a tree to die--"Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." If they were deserving of the death penalty and hung on a tree (cross) to die then they were considered cursed by God (Deut.21:23).
The Apostle Paul writes that "All who rely on observing the law are under a curse...Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Gal.3:13). He was hung on a cross as any Jewish criminal in order that we who loved Him could be spared the curse of the death penalty when we failed to obey the Commandments!
Isaiah predicted hundreds of years before Jesus was born that He would be "like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground" (Isa.53:2). Jesus' new law of love is like a green shoot growing out of the old law of the Pharisees, the dry ground. Jesus is God (Rom.9:5), and God is love (I Jn.4:16). John, who said He was the "Word of Life" (I Jn.1:1) also called Him "the Word of God" (Rev.19:13).
Isaiah rebuked the people of his day for their lack of obedience to the law. The Lord spoke through him: "If only you had paid attention to my commands your peace would have been like a river" (Isa.48:18). How much greater our peace can be since Jesus, the living Word of Love, died to set us free from the law of sin and death (Rom.8:12)! He broke the curse which is rightfully ours when we fail to obey the Commandments.
The Word which gives life is L O V E. We obey Him because we love Him!
© 1999, Doreen Palmer