Mark 12:30-31 NKJV
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ [a]This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
When Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment, he says that its about loving the Lord our God with all our heart mind and soul and strength. What I find most interesting is that he does not stop there because he immediately adds that the second is equally important because it is like the first and it is loving our neighbor as ourselves.
You cannot claim to be following the first commandment if the second is not evident in your life. It is easy for someone to claim that they love God with all their heart mind soul and strength. They can claim that they spend a lot of time in prayer, they read the word and they worship the Lord in spirit and in truth, these are things you cannot judge or dispute because you are not with them when they do them. But, what Jesus is saying is important because it means that if you truly love God as you claim to, then it will manifest in you loving your neighbour as you love yourself.
We all want good things for ourselves and that can even be seen through the kind of prayers we make when we pray for ourselves. That same vigor and wanting the very best for us should be translated into how we treat and relate with our neighbour if we truly love the Lord.
John puts it this way:
1 John 4:20-21 NKJV
If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
Reflections
From your perspective, which is easier, to love God or to love people?
When we truly love God, how are our hearts transformed in the way we relate with others?
“When you fulfill the greatest commandment, the second happens automatically”, what are your thoughts about that statement?
