Filed under: Church, LOVE, Personal | Tags: Christ, Church, Disobedience, Greatest Commandment, LOVE
Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence. ‘This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; Everything in God’s law and the Prophets hangs from them.
Why do we as Christians have to be reminded over and over about love? Jesus said that loving God and loving others is the MOST important thing, above everything else. You would think that what Christ said is the most important thing to do would be the most important thing that we as Christians would do? Sadly to say this is not the priority in many Christian’s lives.
Before you think I am getting on my “high horse” I will be the first to admit that I don’t always get this right. Sometimes loving others is very difficult but Christ gave us some practical help. Jesus said to love others as you love yourself. For me, loving myself comes natural and for most people I think this is true. Just look at our lifestyles. We try to provide everything comfortable and good for ourselves. We provide ourselves with the best food, housing, cars, clothes and toys that our incomes will allow. I think that pretty much classifies each of us in the “loving ourselves” category. No matter our income we make the most of what we have to make our lives comfortable. We love ourselves.
That leads me to this. Do we always want the best for other people? I know many times I don’t and I see others that don’t as well. Either we have a lot of people that hate themselves or we have a lot of Christians that are just plain walking in disobedience to God by their actions and deeds to other people.
The Bible tells us that non-Christ followers will know us by our love for one another. Well you know what? A lot of times non-Christ followers can not recognize us as Christians because of the loveless actions shown between us and the total disregard for Christ’s command to love. And let me say if we are not showing love to one another then we are definitely not showing love to non-Christ followers. Our lack of love for each other also shows our lack of love for God. It’s kind of scary, isn’t it?
So here is my admonishment to all C3ers out there and myself, let’s get the greatest commandment from God to us down, let’s love God first and love others as we love ourselves. This is definitely a central theme at C3. Let’s remember it and practice it. Because LOVE DEFINITELY WINS!
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loveworshiplovelife 
Darrell, what an important concept for all Christians to understand. You would think it would be such an obvious and easy thing for Christians to love others as we love ourselves, but it is not. We must be intentional in our desire and effort to be different from everyone else, simply by the way we love people more than anyone else. One of the greatest books I’ve ever read is “The Great Commandment Principle” by David Ferguson. It was required reading for the Personal Discipleship class that I took at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. It focuses on the very thing you said: we must love God and love others. I highly recommend it for all Christians.
Thanks for the great post!
Comment by Steve April 10, 2008 @ 7:57 pm