Showing posts with label commandments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commandments. Show all posts

Monday, April 16, 2012

The Greatest Commandments

"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. There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:30-31 (NIV)

In response to a question regarding which was the greatest of the commandments, Jesus offered two new commandments, which taken together summarize the ten commandments.
Jesus basically restated Deuteronomy 10:12 with the first commandment. Then He expanded it for the second because you cannot truly love God and not love all God's people.

We to love God with every aspect of our being. All that we say, do, and think should please God. As hard as that is for us to do, the second one is even harder. We are to love all of God's people as we love ourselves. (If we really loved ourselves, we would take better care of ourselves physically and spiritually.) While none of us can do this, it represents the goal of perfection, that perfect love that each of us should strive to attain. This would make us truly Christ-like.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Greatest Commandments

"Jesus replied, 'Love The Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.' " Matthew 22:37-39 (NIV)

"... Heart ... soul ... mind ..." identifies the completeness of our love for The Lord. We should love The Lord with all of our being, as much as is humanly possible.

"... Your neighbor ..." is not just the person who lives next door, but refers to all people.

Some of us cannot remember or recite the ten commandments in order, but we can all remember these two commandments. Our problem is not remembering them, our problem is
keeping them and living them. We should pray daily for God to help us follow these two commandments.