Matthew 22:37-40

Matthew 22:37-40 - Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love is the greatest command. First toward God, then toward people. And we know that we Love because He first Loved us, but what is biblical Love?

In our day and age Love is interpreted to mean something entirely different than what it truly is. If you watch movies or read books you will see love as an overwhelming emotion. There are sayings like, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” Or we see people talking about ‘the one’, and once they find that ‘one’ all other relationships fall by the wayside.

This is a perversion of what true Love is. While emotion is a part of Love it is not the first part. If you base your Love on emotion, what happens when those emotions pass?

Instead, we must understand Love as a choice. Take Jesus for example. He Loves us more than any other, but when He was in the garden facing death, He did not ‘feel’ like Loving us. In fact He prayed that God take the responsibility from Him. When there was no other way He chose to Love us regardless of what He had to go through.

Our Love must be the same. We must Love God despite what our emotions tell us and it is the same with people. Make a choice to Love and the emotion and passion will come.

1 John 4:7-8

1 John 4:7-8 - Dear friends, let us Love one another, for Love comes from God. Everyone who Loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not Love does not know God, because God is Love.

There are 3 stages of God’s Love in your life. First is the receiving. We have to understand how much God Loves us and open our arms to it. We discussed in yesterday’s blog about how great God’s Love is for us that He calls us His children. His Love is the most important thing and we must learn to receive it from Him.
Next we have to return it to Him. When ask what the greatest commandment was Jesus response was, “Love the Lord your God.” We can’t fulfill this command until we receive His Love, but once we do we must return it to Him. Loving God is the first thing we must do once we have His Love in our hearts.
As Jesus spoke about the greatest commandment He continued by stating the second is like the first, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the third thing we must do with God’s Love. We must Love people. This is where John’s message comes in. He says, “Dear friends, let us Love one another, for Love comes from God.”

He continues by telling us that if we are born of God and know God the proof will be in our Love for each other. If we do not Love people we do not know God. That sounds pretty harsh, but it is true.

“Who are you to tell me if I Love God or not?” you may ask. Think about it this way. If you truly know God, a being that is Love, and you Love Him, you will adopt His attitude toward people. God Loves people and if you Love Him you will also Love what He Loves.

In reality Loving people is Loving God. We see that as we Love God we adopt His Love for people. So by fulfilling the greatest command we also end up fulfilling the the second greatest as well.

1 John 2:15-16

1 John 2:15-16 - Do not Love the world or anything in the world. If anyone Loves the world, the Love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has or does - comes not from the Father but from the world.

What is it that you Love? We are instructed to Love God and Love people. When Christ came He was our example. He lived a life of Love, showing us how to Love God and how to Love people. Christ also showed us what it means to deny yourself and the world. He resisted sin and temptation and followed the plan God laid out for Him. Now we must follow His example.

In this passage John talks about how we must not Love the world. He tells us that if we Love the world God’s Love cannot be in us. If there is anyone (besides Jesus) who knows about the Love of God it is John. He was the disciple that saw himself through the eyes of God as the one whom Jesus Loves.

As we look at this message of Love we must remember that ‘where your  treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ Whatever you value as your treasure is what you Love the most. If you love the world, then you value the world the most. On the flip side though if you Love God you find that He is your treasure.

So John tells us not to love the world and then he also explains what he means. Really it is your heart and attitude toward the world. It’s not the stuff itself that is bad, it is your attitude toward it that can make it bad. We see John talk about the ‘cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has or does.’

You see, It is not the things themselves, it is our attitude toward those things. It is the craving, lusting and boasting that make the things bad. Don’t let things consume you, that is what it means to not love the world. Instead let God consume your heart and your mind.