And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. — Mar 12:30, 31
No other commandments greater than these. To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as thyself. What a high standard! What a call to selfless livin; to love others as yourself!
The greatest commandments are not dress like I dress, believe like I believe, speak in modern tongues, get baptized in Jesus’ name, keep Saturday as a holy day and stop eating pork, accept some sect as the one true visible church, or what ever doctrine professing Christians hobby-horse these days.
The greatest thing is love: the loving of God, the loving of his son Jesus, the loving of doing “those things that are pleasing in his sight” (1Joh 3:22). The loving of our neighbor as ourselves, and the loving especially of “them who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10).
The standard of Christian love is given to us in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, chapter 13 — the love chapter.
1Co 13:4-8 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.
If we have not this love, we are nothing (1Cor 3:2) and everything we do profits us nothing (1Cor 13:3).
June 3rd, 2011 at 12:59 am
When our hearts are fully devoted to God, we are able to walk in the love that God gives us, from the inside out.