The Command

 "Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the Law of Moses?" Jesus replied, "You must the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment." Matthew 22:36-38....."If the greatest commandment is to love Him with all our being, is the greatest sin the failure to obey it?" Chris Tiegreen

Larry Crabb said that we love God like we love our favorite restaurant or store. We love them for their good service, for their getting us what we want, and for making us feel good all the while. We love them until a better restaurant or store shows up and does all of it better. Like our love for these, our love for Him tends to be very shallow and fleeting.

Love has become the cheapest of words in our culture. Perhaps in the church most of all. We use it so loosely, and often manipulatively. It may burn white hot for a time, but when it cools, we walk away from what had been the object of our love, and easily it seems. We bring this same style of love to Him, and then, to each other. There is little that's deep rooted in it. We're a fickle people. Deep down, we know that, but we seem little bothered by it. That alone should show us how shallow our love for Him and one another can be. In fact, can it be called love at all?

When Jesus answered the question, He was quoting from Deuteronomy, where the people were told that they must love the Lord with literally all of their being. Such love can never give way to any other love. Yet, in the hearts of His people, it does, and often. We know that. We've experienced it. It's witnessed by the many times we've pushed Him into the background of our lives and invested our "being" into a person, a profession, and yes, a ministry. Something or someone else gets the best of us, and He gets whatever is left over. We know it's wrong, but we're not bothered overmuch by it. After all, we know He loves us unconditionally, so we make peace with the wrongness, the sin of it, and go on. We're blind, not only to the sin of it, but that the Lord will give us over to the tyranny of our other loves. He did so with Israel, and many times. He will do so with us. Yet, somehow, we go on giving ourselves over to that which either cannot love as He does, or will not, and never will. We become enslaved to our lesser loves and lose the freedom we have with our first and greatest love.

We don't understand what He has for us in this commandment. We think He's forbidden us to passionately love other people or things. He hasn't. What He wants us to know and experience is that when He is the centerpiece of our love, His love flows into and out of us. We learn to love with His love, and our experience of love reaches heights we never dreamed of. Our love for another would never be extinguished when it is fueled and kept alive by His infinite love in us. Why do we think we know so much more about love than the One who is the Author of Love? Our problem is, we don't really know, and haven't really experienced the Author.

True passion for Him can't be worked up. It's only experienced as we experience Him. Annie Herring, the gifted singer-songwriter of the Jesus Music group 2nd Chapter of Acts, tells of her meeting Christ through His saving grace. She'd been in San Francisco at the height of the "hippie" movement. She was on the verge of securing a recording contract with the promise of becoming a star. She heard His voice whisper into her heart that she could sign that contract, and have the stardom she'd so craved, or she could have Him. She said she answered, "Lord, after knowing You, I don't want anything else." May we, you and I, share her passion. May we love Him with all of our being. May we want nothing else, serve nothing else, love nothing else, over and above Him.

Blessings,

Pastor O