The most important command, cut to the chase. When all is said and done…

Love God…and Love others.

THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS

Sums up the whole Bible…all the Law of the prophets hang (depend) on this command. Summarizes the ten commandments, first four relate to God; other six relate to man. Loving God is the greatest, loving man is like it.

Matt 7:12…golden rule. However you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this sums up the Law of the Prophets.

Rom 13:8-10…Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law…love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.

LOVE GOD…HEART, MIND, SOUL AND STRENGTH.

Love is commanded

Quotes Deuteronomy 6:5. Love God with everything that is within you. How do you love by commandment? How do you call upon love as a duty or obligation? No one has ever been able to pass a law to compel one human being to love another.

Love of willing not feeling

Different kinds of love.  One lies in the emotion the other in the will. Act of the will. Decide to love. Agape. Obedience is the result of this love. Can’t think with your emotions, or decide with them, think with the mind, intellect. Decide with your will. Popular song…I feel it in my fingers, toes…love is all around me, so the feeling grows. I know I love you, I always will, my mind’s made up by the way that I feel. There’s no beginning there’ll be end, ‘cos on my love you can depend...And when you don’t feel like it anymore? Very unreliable form of love. The most superficial form. You never know where you stand with it. It’s on again off again. We have very little control of it. Falling in love, it just happens. It comes and it goes, rises and falls, flares up and disappears as it chooses, and changes from hot to warm to cool and back to warm again very much as does the weather. Think of marriage vows? What kind of love will keep a person to his word?

Love for God lies in the will, obedience is the result. “If you love me you will obey my commandments”(Jn 14:5)

LOVE OTHERS…AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF.

Self Love

Not a command to love yourself, simply an assumption that we do. Jesus here starts with your inborn, deep, defining human trait – love for yourself. Powerful instinct for self preservation and self fulfillment.

We all want to be happy! To live and find satisfaction. We want food, clothes, shelter, protection from violence, meaningful or pleasant activity, friends to like you, to feel accepted, significance, for your life to count in some way. Self love is the deep longing to diminish pain and increase happiness…Jesus starts with this when he says…as yourself.  Everyone without exception has this human trait.

Cuts to the root of our sinfulness and exposes it. The desire for our own happiness apart from God and apart from the happiness of others in God. Trying to find ourselves apart from God. Realizing ourselves at the expense of God and others. This command cuts to the root, exposes it and severs it.

THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL

We have the desire but not the Power

But now there is a problem. I want to will to love God and others in this way but I can’t seem to do it consistently in practice. I know I should but That is not enough. I seem to have the Knowledge but not the power. Where is the power to do it? If that is how you are thinking you are in good company…Paul says…for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do nopt want to do – this I keep on doing…Rom 7: 18-19.

We need a whole new Man

We need help. And thank God there is help. The Gospel is the power of God unto the salvation of all who believe. A right standing with God is accomplished by Christ Jesus on our behalf. When we receive Him the power to change becomes a reality in our lives. When we recognize that we cannot do it on our own, we are just too sinful, God has done it through Christ and I can now live a new life in Him. Paul ends this whole matter by crying out in frustration…What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue (deliver) me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord. The power to love is in the Gospel of Christ. Believe and you will see.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• How does love fulfill, or complete the law? Or what does Jesus mean when he says that all the law of the prophets hang (depend) on love?
• Discuss the difference between the love of feeling and the love of willing? What other kinds of love are there?
• How does the gospel empower us to obey the law?  Rom 8:1-4.