Love God, Love Neighbor

This past Saturday, Simon and I got to attend my brother’s wedding in Oxford, Kansas. It was a wonderful time to see family and welcome a new person into our family. It was a celebration of love and commitment. And like many pastors, the pastor who married my brother and Emma used 1 Corinthians 13 as the main passage when he preached. It is a bit of a cliche, really, but I also can’t say anything because it was one of the passages Simon and I choose as well. Paul really gives us a masterclass of what biblical love is. Love is patient and kind, it is not envious or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails.

Because as heard from Jesus’ own words in the Gospel lesson today from Matthew, he says that the greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, hang all the laws and the prophets. So when confronted by a pharisee who was also a lawyer and asked what is the greatest commandment, this is what Jesus points to. And this is great news for us right, because love never fails, so if we can just learn to love, we’ll be set right? If we can learn to love God and love those around us, we will be a better church, a better country, a better world, set on fire for the Lord, right?

Well, I’m not so sure. And before you come with pitchforks up to the front and throw me out of the church for contradicting scripture, hear me out. We really seem to live in a world that is full of love. We are in the last day of pride month where we are suppose to show love and support to LGBTQ folks. Where people trance around our country shouting for people to use their correct pronouns and to give our children hormone blockers because they are confused about who they are. And what are we supposed to do? We are supposed to love, support. We are to agree with their lifestyle. And if we don’t, we are labeled in very unkind ways and accused of not following Jesus’s greatest command, to love our neighbor. The world really is full of love, right? Our churches preach love and acceptance and tolerance of all people of all lifestyles, unless it contradicts with their worldview, unless it interferes with their politics, unless it paints them in a bad light to be associated with those, unless it is actually taking the whole of scripture into account instead of just cherry-picked sayings of Jesus.

Because while in theory the world is full of love, if we really take a look around, if we take what we know from scripture, even of this passage we read today of the greatest commands, this is not what biblical love looks like. Because while the world may be full of love, the love that is popular right now is a worldly love. A worldly love can deceptively look a lot like biblical love, and its meant to. Worldly love is set up to give us a false notion that we are following God’s commands, but what we fail to see is that we have been failing at Godly love since the beginning of time. And yet, we think our love is better than history’s past. Our love is superior because it is wide, it is tolerant, it is radical, it is new. We are the people who finally get it. But if we really take a hard look at the love that the church and the people of today are infatuated with, are in love with, is contrary to the love that God has.

Let’s go back to where we started, yeah? 1 Corinthians 13, one that really stands out to me is that love is not arrogant or rude. Our love today is very arrogant and rude. Our love doesn’t just think we are right, our love knows without a doubt, beyond reproach, that we have it all figured out. Our love cannot hear any kind of criticism, not even constructive criticism, or feedback. That would be an insult to us and our understanding of love. And of course the other that stands out is that love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. The world’s love right now, and probably always has, rejoices in wrongdoing. But the hard thing about that is right now, the world’s love has convinced us that what was once seen as wrongdoing is now truth. So people who are infatuated with worldly love right now truly, I think, believe that they are rejoicing in the truth. They rejoice in the truth that God put them in the wrong body. They rejoice in the truth that killing a whole people group is a good and righteous thing. They rejoice in the truth that women should have a right to choose to kill a baby that they chose to make. They rejoice in the wrong truth.

Because what I think is the downfall of love right now is the fact that we are making up our own truth, and we are erasing God’s actual truth. Because where do these commands come from? Jesus doesn’t just make these two commands up in Matthew for the first time. This wasn’t the first time that the Israelites and the Pharisees and all the other religious teachers of the day had heard these commands. No these commands are some of the earliest words from the Hebrew scriptures. These are in Pentateuch, the first books of the Bible. They have been a part of the Jewish and the Christian tradition pretty much as long as there were either of those traditions. And yet, we forget that and think that these are revolutionary words of Jesus that he pulls out of nowhere and completely redefines what it means to be religious and to be a follower of God. But really, these words have been the center of being a follower of God since the beginning.

First we have to look at the first commandment that Jesus says, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind (or strength). This commandment was and still is a prayer that Jewish people all around the world say every morning. The Shema. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-9. And I’ll read a couple verses with it.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 CEB

Israel, listen! Our God is the Lord! Only the Lord! Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength. These words that I am commanding you today must always be on your minds. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up. Tie them on your hand as a sign. They should be on your forehead as a symbol.Write them on your house’s doorframes and on your city’s gates.

As we can hear from the Shema and the teaching that goes with it, this is a central teaching from God. This is something we are to teach our children, we are supposed to talk about this at all times of the day, we are supposed to write this on our bodies and hearts, we are supposed to hang them from our houses and cities. This is what we are to be known for as people of God. That we love our God above all else. That we love God with everything that we have. And that we teach that love to all of our kids. And that we are defined by that love to those outside of the faith. When people see people of God, they should say, wow, they love their God with all of their being.

So much of our scripture following the Shema is teaching and showing us how to love God. We love God by keeping his commandments. But what we confuse a lot of times are what God’s commandments really are. What we really end up doing is stripping down God’s law to love. And while that’s halfway correct, it is not what God has called us to do. Jesus himself said that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill the law. Jesus did not come to say that everything up until this point is horse manure and now all you need to do is love; Jesus came to remind us what love really is. And first is loving God and keeping his commands. That means that we don’t just throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we listen to what the Lord says and how the Lord created the world to operate.

The New Testament tells us that we love because God first loved us. And we also know that God is love. And I think where we get confused a lot is that God loves us despite our sin. And yes this is absolutely true. We see that all the way through scripture and history, right? Israel was a messed up nation. Even before it was even Israel it was messed up. Read through Genesis and all the family drama, they were not perfect, yet God loved them. Read through Judges, they were not perfect, yet God loved them. Read through the prophets, they were not perfect, yet God loved them. But that doesn’t mean that God didn’t correct them. That doesn’t mean that God wasn’t displeased with them. That doesn’t mean that God sat back and condoned all their sin. No, God repeatedly called them out on their sin and wrongdoing. He condemned them for not loving the poor and for worshiping false idols, for disparaging the temple, for not taking in the widows. And this correcting that God does, is love. This is God teaching us how to love. Because our worldly love is not Godly. It is not real love as defined by Paul in 1 Corinthians. Without God, we are fallen and sinful. Even with God, we are still fallen and sinful, but hopefully growing in sanctification, hopefully growing in Christ-likeness, in Godliness, and we do that by loving how God loves. By learning how God loves, by learning who God is because God himself is love. And scriptures describes this process of correcting our condition in many ways: circumcision of the heart, GOd’s writing his laws on our hearts, God’s substituting a heart of flesh for a heart of stone, being born again by the Spirit, removing old clothing and replacing it with new, dying to a sinful life and resurrecting to a new one, moving out of darkness into light. Until this happens we cannot love a Godly love.

So this is how we come to love. By knowing the heart of God, by following his commands, by growing closer to him. And out of love for God, true love for God and everything that God stands for, only then can we grow to love others. See, I think often we try to love others first. And this is what we see with the world too often right now. A love for the world, a love for people, a love for worldly things. But it is only out of a love for God that then we love others. And the other way is true. It is also not a Godly love to only love God but to despise people. For God, and Jesus shows us in this Matthew passage, loving God and loving neighbor are two sides of the same coin. You really cannot have one without the other. 1 John tells us that whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. So to know God we must love. And again from John, he implores us: let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This means that our love is not really about affirmation like so many seem to think it is, but love is in action. Love is providing housing for those who have none. Love is taking in the orphans and the widows. Love is providing food and clothing and water and shelter. Love is being a friend and showing up for people. This kind of love is perfectly shown in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Showing up for someone when they have no one else. Showing love through action, showing God’s love through action.

But we must remember that if we are loving our neighbors without first loving God, we are not showing Godly love. And if we love God without loving our neighbors, we are not showing Godly love either. So how can we show this radical love, this agape love, the ahavah love? We show it by loving God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength. We show it by growing closer to God. Actually diving into scripture, all of it, from the Pentateuch, through the prophets, and the Gospels, and the letters. We show it by talking to God through prayer. We show it by writing God’s commandments on our hearts and living in a way that shows that we are a called people. We show it by opposing worldly love and instead love through God’s eyes. Rebuking when we are called to. Giving when we are called to. Showing up when we are called to. This is all love. And we keep in mind our litmus test: 1 Corinthians 13: that love is patient and kind, it does not boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. That God’s love never ever fails.