Sunday, March 20, 2011

2 Things

"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'.” Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)

Imagine that someone steps up to you and asks you what the Christian life are all about.  How would you answer them?

Before reading these verses, I might have had several answers to give them, all of which would have been long and involved.  I probably would have bored them to tears and turned them off.  I might have talked about Creation, the Fall, the Flood, Israel's trek through the wilderness, the birth of Jesus, His life, His crucifiction, His ressurection, His ascention, His promise to come again, the way of salvation, the dos and don'ts of  Christian behavior, Heaven, Hell, Amageddon or any number of other things.

Fortunately, for us, someone asked Jesus what the most important commandment is and he summed up the whole Old Testament (the law and the prophets), which was the only Bible they had back then in just two sentences, found in the passage above.

In fact, it can be boiled down even further - to just 4 words: LOVE GOD, LOVE PEOPLE.

If we work on those 2 things, everything else will take care of itself. If we love God, we will follow His commandments and walk in His ways. If we love God, we will open our hearts to receive salvation from Jesus Christ. If we love people, we will serve them, encourage them, support them, forgive them and pray for them just as Jesus instructed us to do.

So, it's simple - Love God, Love People.  Let's not complicate things so much.

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(Copyright© 2011 Jan Christiansen. All rights reserved.)

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