Love, Matthew 22:35.40
I heard it said recently that ‘love’ has lost it’s meaning in the English language. We ‘love’ this TV series or that fancy restaurant, we ‘love’ this special dessert or that celebrity couple. But how much do we really love other people – or ourselves for that matter! The lawyer Pharisee sought to trick Jesus into misspeaking himself. Was he actually interested in the real answer? And yet Jesus gives him an honourable reply: love God with everything you are, love people equally as much, and love yourself the same.
Any one of those is a big ask, but Jesus tells him (and us) ‘on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ God is a God of love. It’s easy to get caught up in the death and destruction of the Old Testament – to separate the seemingly vengeful God described there from the sacrificial love of Jesus in the gospels – but when Jesus says ‘all the law and prophets’ he’s describing the Pharisee’s whole world – everything written in the scrolls he spent his days studying – all the judicial precepts contained in the Law, all the utterances of the prophets, all the voices of history, they all describe a God of love who shows and gives love unconditionally to the people he created.
So how do we love? With all that we are, with our whole world. If that’s parenting, we parent to the best of our ability; if it’s paid employment, then we serve our employers and colleagues to the fullest we are able; if we’re retired then we use our time and talents generously in loving our family, friends or community. But we’re commanded to love and respect our own self just as much. We’re not to give and give to the point of exhaustion. As God loves us, we love others – it’s as much His love as our own that flows out to others – but we need to remember to receive.
So what’s the greatest commandment? To love the Lord your God, who will give you the strength and capacity to truly love the people around you and be kind to yourself.