Loving God is not complicated

Greetings,
We studied Mark 12:28-34 this past Sunday morning. The "Great Commandment" is difficult to discuss only in that it is so familiar. Practically every church I walk into has somewhere in it's literature that they are a "Great Commandment Church." On a plaque or cross-stitched on a pillow or in their bulletin we can find something like, Love God...Love People.

When Jesus was asked by one of the teachers in Jerusalem, "of all the commandments, which is the most important," Jesus answered that the most important is to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus considered all 613 Jewish precepts and boiled them down to this simple command...one command to love God with all we are; all our personality and all our being, and to love our neighbor just as we love ourselves.

I struggle a lot with how to love God with all my very being. It seems like Mark is telling his congregation that my love for God, this complete and absolute and exclusive love, will be defined and demonstrated by my love for people...my neighbors. The Apostle Paul states that the entire Jewish law is summed up in a single command....what is that? He says the sum of the entire 613 precepts of the law is "love your neighbor as yourself." James calls loving your neighbor as the "royal law." Paul and James leave out the loving God part...or do they?

Paul and James tell me, "Rob, if you want to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and spirit, begin and end with showing love to your neighbor." That I can understand. I may still have some difficulty in applying it or obeying it, but I can understand exclusive love for God through loving my neighbor for God's sake!

Loving my God with all I am is not that complicated. Loving my God with all I am is not that theologically deep. Loving God is living life as a servant to others beginning with my wife and my children and then serving all God puts in front of me. I am to love others not to gain acceptance by God, but rather because He loves me so much....

LOVE