Mark 12:28-31
First Command for the First of the Year
Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall
The first of the year is a good time to rehearse again to our selves the first priorities of our faith. Let's consider again the first command as given by our Lord.
Mark 12:28-31 (Holman) One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked Him, "Which command is the most important of all?" "This is the most important," Jesus answered: "Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these."
God is love. Therefore we should not be surprised to learn from the Bible that love is the essence of the first and second commandments, the first fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), and a prime evidence a person has been saved; "The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 John 4:8).
The first command teaches us we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. God's never ending love for us is a debt we can never repay.
God showers innumerable benefits on us day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. In no way could we ever begin to do enough kind, good deeds to repay all He does for us, but we know we must do something to show our gratitude.
We know we owe him, and feel compelled to respond, yet have no way of directly repaying His favors. We can do nothing directly for Him. We own nothing He needs. The Lord lets us make partial payment on His love by our loving others.
The Bible says Christians are to love each other as family. We love one another not because we merit each other's love, but due to a family relationship.
We dare not refuse anyone God accepted as a child. Only a Cain mumbles, "Am I my brother's keeper?" This question a Christian must never dare to ask.
We evangelicals take pride in saying salvation is given to us on the basis of God's grace, yet we sometimes act as if people have to merit our love. We seem to be voicing a contradiction, "God's love is free, but people have to earn mine."
We must show, as well as receive, grace. He who knows everything about us loves us most. Our limited knowledge of others can work to our disadvantage. No two Christians would quarrel very much if they could be each other for a while.
If we knew everything about our fellow believers, we would be able to see in their hearts enough sorrow and suffering to disarm our hostility. The very believer we dislike most has probably had as hard a time keeping from being worse than he or she is, as we have had in keeping from being worse than we are.
Because God loves us, we Christians are to love not only believers, but also our neighbor. Christ forever answered the question "Who is my neighbor?" in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The issue is not "Who is my neighbor?" but rather, "To whom can I be neighborly?" Anyone near us in need is our neighbor.
The early Christians took to heart Christ's command to love each other and their neighbors. They became a body of believers whose love exploded like dynamite in the Roman world. Their love compellingly pulled people to itself.
Emperor Julian the Apostate, who hated Christians and tried to eradicate them, said their power to lead people away from pagan gods was largely due to the love they showed. Another enemy of early believers felt compelled to confess in exasperation, "See how these Christians love one another."
Unbelievers could hardly resist this love's drawing power. Christian love is a magnet, a law of gravity in the spiritual universe, a vacuum drawing to itself.
Christian love's force emptied pagan temples, demolished altars, silenced philosophers, and confounded our enemies. In a world where tyrants knew no mercy, women and children were shown no dignity, and slaves found no respite, the oppressed looked up and reveled in a new healing force. Their minds were eased, and their burdens lifted, as a refreshing wave of love wafted over them.
When plague raged in Alexandria, the heathen at the first sign of infection drove out loved ones, threw family members barely alive into the streets, and left their dead unburied. In contrast to this cruel selfishness, "The Christians," Bishop Dionysius said, "in the abundance of their brotherly love, did not spare themselves, but mutually attending to each other, they would visit the sick without fear, and ministering to each other for the sake of Christ, cheerfully gave up their lives with them. Many died after their care had restored others to health. Many who took the bodies of their Christian brethren into their hands and bosoms, and closed their eyes, and buried them with every mark of attention, soon followed them in death."
During a smallpox plague in Greenland, Moravian missionaries loved all indiscriminately, including their enemies. They accommodated as many as their house would hold, and gave up their own beds to the sick. One of their worst foes, which had assailed the missionaries mercilessly, was thrown into the street to die. They took him in and nursed him. Shortly before he died, he thanked them: "You did for us what our own people would not do. You fed us when we had nothing to eat. You buried our dead, who would have been eaten by dogs, foxes, and ravens. You instructed us in the knowledge of God, and told us of a better life."
Radically loving others will not win all, but is our finest hope to win some, to overcome prejudicial barriers that resist the message of Jesus. Love is the key to success. The command to love was not original to Jesus. Long before He came, the Old Testament commanded, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev. 19:18).
The directive to love was old, but there was newness and freshness about Christian love. Jesus said, "I give you a new commandment: love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another" (John 13:34).
The love required in Jesus' followers was new in that it required love after a radical new model, "as I have loved you." It was drastically new because it could not have been conceived before His life exhibited it. The love Jesus showed was compassion totally beyond human ability to imagine, much less imitate, on its own.
The love of Christ crossed barriers no one had ever before dreamed of trying to cross. His love was a unique thing, newly defined. And the world wondered.
Since love is vital to Christian living, we need to be sure we define love as Jesus did. If we were allowed to give our own definition to love it would probably result in lazy, stunted compassion, and shallow commitment. The latter are not options, for God Himself settled what love is through His Son Jesus. The Bible never leaves us with a vague notion of what love is.
"This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers" (1 John 3:16). It is not our prerogative to say what love is; God defined it and revealed its character (Leavell).
We measure our love by weighing it in the scales with Christ's love. The cross requires admiration and imitation. Jesus' death patterns for us a loving life. His self-sacrificing love is our example. Biblical love is not romanticism, a warm feeling, or nice emotion, but sacrificially giving ourselves for another's well being.
Unbelievers still marvel when they see Jesus' love exhibited by a person's life. Every believer is expected to act like Jesus, to be conspicuous for radical love. It should be the prominent feature in our everyday conduct.
The normal course of our lives should be spent in a fog of caring. Love should be an atmosphere we carry everywhere with us in all our daily routine.
Our goal as Christ-followers should not be to do one, two, or three loving acts a day, but to have love as the all encompassing tenor of our lives. "Your every action must be done with love" (1 Corinthians 16:14).
To love as Jesus loved is to choose to give sacrificially always, not occasionally, to decide before our day begins that this whole day we will act in love. We don't wait till later in the day, when opportunity to show love presents itself, and then decide whether or not we want to be bothered or have time to love.
Our decision to love was made irrevocably in the past, leaving us no longer any freedom to control our actions, to limit our love. Our day must early on be turned over to God to let Him create opportunities for us to show love.
We choose in advance to live each day based on the hurts of others. To love as Christ loved, to give self, entails the choice to be no longer selfishly in control, but rather to be ruled by the needs of others placed in our path by God.
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