Loving One Another
Why is loving God and loving our neighbor the greatest commandment? How well are we doing with loving God and one another?
Loving God is essential to loving our neighbor well. And we cannot love God without also loving our neighbor. God’s greatest commandment is love. God is love.
When asked by the religious leaders which commandment is the greatest, Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31, ESV).
God invites us to love him first, with all that we are, and then to love our neighbor as ourselves. Love begins with God.
We cannot devote ourselves to a greater obedience than to adhere to what Jesus himself calls the greatest commandment.
Loving ourselves well is contingent upon loving God with all that we are. Loving our neighbor well is contingent upon loving ourselves. Love begins with God and ends in loving ourselves and our neighbor—in obedience to our God of love—and from a posture of love for God.
May we love God with all that we are and may we love one another well by loving our neighbor as ourselves.
In Christ alone, Robbie
A Collect For The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20): “O Lord, you have taught us that without love, all our deeds are worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the true bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whoever lives is counted dead before you; grant this for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer, 2019).
