Seriously what was Jesus thinking when He answered the question, What are the two most important laws… He bypassed the Ten Commandments, the dietary rules, the rules for sacrifices, He also didn’t mention the Sabbath. So rather than mention any laws that proscribed rules for holy behavior, He chose two laws that dealt with love.
Now I have read and reread CS Lewis’s Four Love’s and read many other papers on the subject of love. Obviously Jesus wasn’t talking about romantic love or the love of ice cream. He seemed to be talking about a familial love, like the love you have for your children or your parents. Jesus was saying, IMHO, that we should love God like we love our own father, and we should love our neighbors like we love ourselves and our family members. So when the Law says, you cannot work on Sabbath, but your neighbors house is on fire, you go put the fire out. Or maybe they need groceries brought in or bushes trimmed, you help them, because you would do that for yourself.
But why did Jesus, knowing that His answer was going to be looked at till the end of time, pick love and not obedience. Shouldn’t obeying God be more important than loving God. After all, that is how we get to Heaven….or is it. I loved my father when He was alive, and I still love him today. When I was growing up, he had rules and expected obedience. I didn’t need to understand his rules, I needed to follow them. I had to go to bed at a certain time, clean my room, do my homework. But at a certain point, I grew up and didn’t live in his house and didn’t have to follow the rules of that house.
Yet I find myself still doing the things he told me to do, and now all of a sudden I make my own children do the same things. I don’t do it out of obedience, I do it out of love. I love that my Dad taught me to do good things. That love has turned into respect and appreciation for his wisdom. Jesus seems to be telling us to have that same relationship with God. And proof of it is how we treat others. How we pass on that wisdom.
As a people, Jesus is saying. .hey you are grown up now. I shouldn’t have to tell you what to do. You should be able to see that my ways are good and want them for you and your family. Its kind of nice knowing we are all grown up.
You can’t have that kind of love for God and not imitate it. It would be like saying I love the way my father gave me chores and taught me discipline, which has helped me so much in life…and than telling your own children feel free to run amok, no rules, just be lazy and have fun. Would anybody believe the first if they saw you acting like that? Loving God is a familial way means we want our loved ones to have the same benefits that our relationship with Him.
There is an old story from the early church that people would find the Apostle John and ask, what is the most important thing a follower of Jesus should do? He would reply, love God and love your neighbor. Many would be discouraged, they wanted something hard, something super spiritual. Turns out God is simple. I love that God is simple.
The musings of Peter 