Love God and Love Your Neighbor
When Jesus was asked which was the great commandment in the Law He replied:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)
In the Lord’s prayer, Matthew 6:9, is the phrase “hallowed be your name.” Obeying the command to love God with all of us and honoring God above all else is healthy because it keeps us from idol worship, and we can make an idol out of almost anything or anyone. And no idol can love us, guide us, save us, or be in fellowship with us. Idol worship leads to despair.
Then there is the golden rule: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets”[1] (Matthew 7:12).
“Love” for God is to be whole hearted in our love of God, with no worship of or devotion for any other gods or goddesses. “Love” for the neighbor is to seek the best for those whom one might encounter, not merely the folks next door. This “rule” is helpful since we generally know how we would like to be treated.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates the point. Jesus tells the story of a Jewish man who is waylaid by robbers and beaten almost to death. A Samaritan finds the Jewish man, and the Samaritans and Jews detested one another, yet at considerable time and expense, the Samaritan made sure the traumatized man received help. (see Luke 10:25-37)
How is this healthy?
A focus on ourselves is common to us all, and necessarily so. We must see to our well-being and develop hope for the future. Here now Jesus makes it clear that we are to “love” ourselves. This does not have to be a “me first” mentality at all, but it a reasonable, and healthy injunction to care for ourselves.
It is not healthy to think we are bad people, and most of us do think such from time to time. When we get stuck there, however, and denigrate ourselves for whatever reasons, we want to see that this is not as it should be. It may mean we may be suffering from something else, something that needs attention and even with the help of mental health professionals.
Yes, we may come to the end of ourselves and turn to outside stimulation? Sometimes quickly. What with street drugs, sexual excess, frantic and risky behavior, our lives spiral downward. Trouble builds and, in every way, —mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
We live in a world filled with high stress and anxiety; our world is complex and scary. Wars and rumors of war, nation against nation, trouble everywhere is now the norm. Have humans evolved to the point where we can cope with the stress factors that swirl about us? Not yet, and maybe never.
When our thoughts are constantly inward, anxiety only grows. And we soon discover there is little, if any, hope for the future. However, ‘deep’ we attempt to go into our inner being, we will be disappointed when we find only emptiness or frightening images.
Too often we go looking for love in all the wrong places and only find love that is fleeting and maybe not love at all. Loneliness grows, and hope recedes. Some cope, others do not. Some want to end it all; others lose contact with reality and experience psychotic states; this is real for many people.
Again, it is not wrong to be concerned about ourselves, yet we are to love God with all of who we are. The focus shifts, not away from ourselves, but upward toward the God who created us and loves us. Almost preposterous that the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit should love us, we who have rebelled against Him, but He does. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And if that is not enough there is this wonderful verse: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
“Propitiation” is a big word and means that Jesus, the son, took all our sin, transgressions, rebellious ways, wrong doing, etc., upon Himself when He died on the cross. Of course, this does not make that much sense to us, yet it is, nevertheless, the truth of it.
“Love” in the passages above, both John 3:16 and 1 John 4:10 is, is transliterated agape. It means that God loves us much and wants the very best for us, which is eternal fellowship with Him in heaven. Jesus literally died in our place. Only God could make this preposterous and absurd sacrifice, at least from our perspective, and all because of His love for us.
Sin is not good for us. Not only does it wreak havoc in our lives, it separates us from God and forever. Yes, forever, and yes, I mean hell. Now hell is where God is not. And God being holy, meaning sin cannot ever come before Him, means that if we die unforgiven, we cannot be in His presence, ever.
We have to admit no one knows why the Creator God has allowed all this to happen. What we do know is that it has happened, but that this same God has done something about it. This is the story of Jesus.
From our limited perspective we get lost in trying to figure it all out. This is why we have the Bible, the written Word of God that reveals the Living Word of God, Jesus the Messiah. He died in our place because of love, real love, a love that does not go away.
Never alone
Biblical Christianity is healthy because it brings love to us. Jesus never leaves us, He continues to love us despite ourselves. This is what JOY is all about. Joy is not jumping around waving our arms in the air and shouting halleluiah, though some will do this, no this joy is the recognition that we are loved with a love that will never fail. We have a Savior who will never turn away, never abandon us, despite how weird and strange we may be at times. Indeed, He wants us to be with Him and forever. Jesus put it this way:
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
(John 14:1-3)
Meaning and purpose
There is another reason why biblical Christianity is healthy. Every Christian not only has meaning in his or her life, but we have been assigned a job to do, one that no one retires from. This is the commission Jesus gave us just before He ascended back to heaven.[2] Here it is, Matthew 28:19-20:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
It cannot get any better than this. Let me make it plain, it is not an easy road to travel and is the road less travelled, but there is no better way. It never gets boring, we are never alone, the adventure never dies down, and there is no retirement age.
Hope does not fade either. Bible hope is not a wish, it is a sure thing. I do not have the words to express what I mean here. The common understanding of the word hope does not begin to define the biblical meaning of the term. My hope is in Jesus Christ and what He has already done for me. It is a done deal. As Jesus said while hanging of the cross, “It is finished.” Nothing can change that, not even stupid and sinful things that I do. No, I do not have a ‘license’ to sin, but an hour hardly goes by that I do not sine in some manner or other. After all, we are to love God with all be are and have and also to love our neighbor as ourselves. Who can say they meet this challenge? My hope, my assurance has nothing to do with my spirituality, it is all about Jesus. And Jesus never fails. Here is what He said: “The thief (meaning Satan) comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:10-11).
Love, forgiveness, assurance, the inner working of the Holy Spirit—this is our prescription for health.[3]
[1] “Law and the Prophets” is a common Jewish expression for all of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.
[2] Heaven is the dwelling place of God. It is not in the physical universe, in fact, we know little about it but one day we will know all about it.
[3] In John 8:44 are these words of Jesus about Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and he father of lies.”