Counter-Cultural Love-The Mystery of the Greatest Commandment (Part 2): Matthew 22:37-40

 

Matthew 22:37-40- "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.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

My wife and I normally enjoy a favorite TV show. Typically, the show we decide to binge watch relates to some type of mystery. Right now we are watching The Curse of Oak Island. We are rooting for the two brothers who are conducting the treasure hunt on this illusive island. 

The Mystery Revealed

Mysteries captivate my attention because they usually probe unanswered questions. I think there is a surprising mystery that relates to the meaning of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Most of us have been taught that loving our neighbor as ourselves means that we are supposed to love other people in the same way that we love ourselves. In a sense, this great commandment has become a continuation of the Golden Rule for our relationships. For example, we should not hurt people because we don't want to be hurt. We should love people because we want to be loved. We should do unto others what we want people to do unto us. So we have been taught that self is the measure by which we are called to love God and our neighbor. 

But loving our neighbor goes much deeper than that. The mystery of this paradigm-shifting commandment is that love has nothing to do with us, but rather it is about other people experiencing the love of God through us when we love them the way God loved us. 

The Unique Nature of the Greatest Commandment

Here is how the greatest commandment uniquely works. First, our neighbor experiences the love of God every time we love him like God loved us. God's love can only be known by us and those we love when we express the love of God to them the way God loved us. Love for our neighbor means we desire only good for them by expressing the goodness of God to them (Romans 13:8-10, NLT). Self, then, cannot be the measure for how we love God because we extend God's love to our neighbor making their encounter with God's love through us the measure of our love for God. 

We then respond to God first loving us by expressing our love for Him when we love others like He loved us. First John 4:7 and 19 explain that God first loved us with unconditional love giving us the capacity to love Him and others in return. 

For example, God forgave us so we respond with our love for God by forgiving others the way He forgave us. God served us by putting His Son to death on the cross so we express our love for God by serving our neighbor when we die to our wants and needs. We display God's first love for us every time we love our neighbor as God loved us. 

Finally, we can also experience God's unconditional love whenever we give God's love away to someone else. You cannot possibly know the love of God without loving another person. Remember, though, this commandment is not about you; it's about how you love others. But the irony is that even though this commandment is not about you, God has made it so that every time you extend His love to someone else, you will experience His love. That means you can experience the forgiveness, mercy, grace, favor, and love of God every time you love someone else the same way God loved you (cf. Matthew 6:14). 

Life Application

The mystery of the greatest commandment is that it's not about you, but about how others receive the love of God through you. This truth challenges how we think about relationships. Our world thinks of love as a feeling contingent upon our satisfaction in a relationship. Therefore, many people believe that a person can fall in and out of love, making things like a painful divorce look like a viable, affordable, and plausible option because someone "fell out of love."  

However, the greatest commandment teaches us that love is not about us. It's about God's love for us being expressed through our love for others. Virtues like forgiveness, patience, and mercy then become normal expressions of God's love in our relationships when we love someone else from within this distinctive ideal of love.  

For example, if you can recount how God first forgave you when you least deserved it because He loved you without condition, then how much more meaningful may it be to that person who betrayed you when you release the offense of their wrong-doing into the unconditional forgiveness of God?  

Jesus altered the paradigm for love when He called us to love God with all the heart, all the soul, all the mind, and all the strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Here again is the mysterious new standard for love embedded within this great commandment: Every person in your life (including you) can know the authentic, eternal love of God when you give His love away to another person just like He first lavished His love on you (1 John 3:1).  

Scriptures for further study

Matthew 22:37-40
Mark 12:28-34
1 John 3:1-3; 4:7-21