It
is not a set of rules.
Jewish
rabbis have counted 613 commands in the Law.
How often have we wandered into a church and it feels like it is
more. Too often, some wander into church
and hear “Don’t do this. Don’t do
that. Do this. Do that.”
As the burden of rules continued to be added upon us, the joy of
Christianity is lost, especially the heart of it. It must be emphasized that the Law of the Old
Testament was designed to be a blessing and not a burden. In the time of Christ, the Pharisees heaped
law upon law and made stipulations which made their religion more of a burden
thus robbing what God had intended it to be for His people, a joyous
blessing. They had the tendency to make
one law more important than the other.
For many during Jesus’ time, a walk with God was more like walking
aimlessly through a minefield. Obedience
was more out of fear and confusion than it was out of reverence.
The
Pharisees focused so much on rules and debating the issue of which law was the
most important that a Jewish lawyer asked Jesus the question. It must be noted that the intent of the
lawyer was not pure as you can read in the following text:
One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a
question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the
Law?" And He said to him, “‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR
HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' "This is the great
and foremost commandment.” The second is
like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' "On these two
commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:35-40)
Did
you catch it? Of the 613 commandments
that Jewish rabbis have counted, the foundation of all 613 rests upon two
important commandments as expressed by Jesus.
Both commandments are found in the Old Testament. “Love God”, the greatest of all commandments
is found in Deuteronomy 6:5. EVERYTHING
we do in our Christian life is simply an outflow of obedience to this
commandment in our lives. It is not a
matter of obedience and living for God because we have to, but simply a
demonstration of our love for God…we want to.
The second important commandment that Jesus taught deals with others:
Love your neighbor. This commandment is
found in Leviticus 19:18. With this
important point in mind, it is now time to reveal in all its simplicity what
the heart of Christianity is.
It
is a relationship.
There
it is. In all of its simple glory this is what the Christian life is. A fact
bolstered by what Jesus tells the Jewish lawyer in Matthew 22 by the usage of
one simple but profound word: LOVE.
Everything we do in this Christian life is simply an outflow of our love
for God. To show love to others (our
neighbors) is simply to show others the same love of Christ that has been
extended to us. In I Corinthians 13, a
chapter affectionately known by many Christians as “The Love Chapter”, Paul
defines love by its characteristics. One
of the characteristics of love in verse 5 says: it does not seek its own.
Another way of explaining this is to say that love seeks to please the
one who is loved. So how can we
demonstrate our love? Do you remember
the 613 commands of the Old Testament as counted by Jewish rabbis? It was God showing to His people how to love
Him. The Bible, God’s Holy Word is God
showing to us how we can love Him. As a
Christian, we are in a relationship. We
simply want to honor Him, love Him, and live for Him. We have now entered a glorious walk with Him
and each day should bring a sense of desire in our hearts and mind to know
Him. It is for the sake of restoring a relationship
broken by sin that Christ came to die. Think
about this for a moment, God came into this world as a man, Jesus Christ, to
restore a relationship with us. The hard
part of restoring the relationship has been taken care of by Him, the ball is
now in our court.
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