| “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” |
| —Mark 12:28c |
Do Christians have an overriding, one-word mission statement? Yes! It is the word “love.” Jesus told us in Mark 12:28-31.
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
As I’ve described in other blog posts, Jesus focuses on the four modalities of human beings:
- heart = emotional
- soul = spiritual
- mind = intellectual
- strength = physical
First and foremost, we are to love God with each of these modalities. We are to love God with the totality of our beings.
Secondly, we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. To illustrate this truth, and to clarify who is our neighbor, Jesus tells the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). The Apostle Paul reminds the “Christ’s-ones” gathered at Rome of the importance of this truth in Romans 13:8:
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.
So, we who belong to God through the life-transforming power of the risen Lord Jesus Christ, have a continuing debt to love one another. And, that’s our marching order for today: go out into the world and show God’s love to everyone we meet.
Based on a blog originally posted on Monday, March 14, 2016
