All you need is love?
Readings: Matthew 22. 34-46
All you need is love, so famously sang the Beatles, but did Jesus get there first? Is that what he’s saying here? That all we need worry about in our faith is love? Love God, love people?
This is the last of 3 attempts to catch Jesus out, to trick him into saying something which will get him arrested or drive at least some of his followers away. We heard the first last week, and we’ve skipped over the second to fit this in before Kingdom season starts next week.
Now attempts to summarise Scripture are nothing new, people did it all the time in Jesus’ day and earlier. We even find them within Scripture, or at least that’s how they were viewed, such as Micah 6. 8 ‘He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?’ or Amos 5.4 ‘For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live”’ or Habbakuk 2.4 ‘Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith’.
You may be familiar with John 3.16 as a summary ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’
Summaries are nothing new. And in many ways what Jesus gives as a summary is nothing new, it would have already been there within the popular thought of the people in those days. “‘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.” He says “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Jesus’ summary of the Law and the Prophets is love. Is it? Modern ethicists have held that it is, that the highest aspect of Christian living is love, if it’s not loving, it isn’t Christian. But that in many ways is a distortion of what Jesus is getting at here. Lets look closer.
It’s no accident that Jesus gives us two commandments whilst only being asked for one, the greatest one. He gives the greatest, to love God with everything you are, but then immediately gives a second, to love your neighbour as yourself. The two cannot be separated. As John reminds us in his first letter “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” But equally it’s no accident that they are in that order.
You see our loves shape us, they shape who we are and they shape whose approval we are looking for. So Jesus reminds us that we are commanded to love God, and then to love our neighbour, the two cannot be separated but one will always be an expression of the other and as such we are to ensure it is our love for God which is shaping our love for others.
So how are we to love God? Well we are to love him with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. In other words loving him will reshape our hearts, our souls, our minds. We become like that which we love and so in loving him our lives start to more and more reflect him. Take Katy & I, we’ve been together for over a decade at this point and our love for one another has shaped us, my love for Katy has reshaped me, her love for me has reshaped her. Not beyond recognition, we’re still recognisably ourselves, but in loving one another, we’ve started to look more like one another in some ways. Even to the point that a few years ago we bought one another the exact same Valentines day.
And the other part of how our loves shape us is in whose approval we’re looking for. If we love someone we care about what they think don’t we. Sometimes in small ways ‘do I look good in this outfit’, sometimes in bigger ways ‘should I take this job offer or not’. And part of this caring what they think is caring about their approval, we want them to approve of us and our choices. In seeking to love God we are seeking to live as he calls us to live, to live a life approved by him. Jesus says it like this ‘if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments’. Our love for him is partly expressed in wanting to live how he calls us to live.
So loving God will reshape our lives, and it’ll set God as the one whose approval we most look for. And in loving God first we are then able to rightly love our neighbour. Because God has reshaped our lives we are able to both encourage and challenge them in their lives. Because God has reshaped us more and more into his image we’re better able to reveal him in how we are with others. Because we are seeking his approval we are able to stand firm when we receive push back for how we are living, we aren’t so worried about what others think.
But if we switch the order we find ourselves in rather a mess. If we seek to love our neighbour first we’ll find ourselves not reshaped in God’s image, but rather in the world around us. Now the standards aren’t God’s but the ever changing standards of this world. We’ll find ourselves faced with a definition of love which can only mean affirmation, if you love me you’ll let me do as I see fit. We’ll find ourselves compromising all over the place to be seen to be supportive and loving of others.
And because what we love shapes whose approval we look for, we’ll find ourselves watering down our faith, ignoring the awkward portions of it in an attempt to be approved of, in an attempt to be seen to be loving, to be approved as accepting.
And in all of this perhaps we’ll look back to God to show him how well we are keeping his command to love our neighbour and instead find ourselves to have drifted far from where he is, where he has called us to be.
But this isn’t how God loves us, it isn’t how he calls us to love others. God loves us exactly how he finds us, in our mess and brokenness, but he loves us too much to leave us there. God’s love for us is what drives him to help us to change, to grow. God’s love for us drives him to rescue us from our darkness and bring us into his light. God’s love means he challenges us, disciplines us, helps us to change. God’s love isn’t affirmation as we are, it’s a love which seeks to lift us from where we are into a new and better life, life in its fulness, life as he created it to be.
In keeping God’s commandments we are to love him first and foremost. Our love for him will reshape our lives, help us to see his perfect and good way, the better way to live, the way he calls us to. Our love for him will mean we seek his approval, find ourselves secure in him, not blown about by the ever changing winds of our world as we frantically seek to be seen to be loving as the world sees it.
And from this secure foundation, knowing God’s love and care for us, living as he commands and knowing his true approval, we are able to love our neighbour as ourself. Not affirming them in all they would want us to affirm them in, but echoing God’s love for them in gentle challenge and encouragement.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus summarises the Law and prophets as ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbour as yourself’. And yet it is just that, a summary, if we want to know how to do this we are to open the Scriptures, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them. Let us not untether our love for neighbour from the moorings of our love for God. But instead seek to love God, allow our love for him and his love for us to change and reshape us, so that as we go out from this place we truly are able to love our neighbour as Christ has loved us.
Amen.