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Show Notes
What’s the most important thing a Christian must do? Let me phrase it this way, what’s the one thing we must do or we are not truly Christian? That is what we are going to explore here in episode 2.
Hi. My name is Charles, and this is the Simple Not Shallow Podcast. A podcast for those who want a deeper faith, not a confusing one. That is what our name is about, keeping faith in Christ simple enough for a child like me to understand it and yet, not so shallow that when the storms of life hit, our faith runs aground.
Ready to leave the safety of the harbor and travel free on the open sea? Here we go.
So, the other day I was reading my Bible and came across some very interesting things. And with just a little cross-referencing (don’t let that fancy word scare you, it’s my way of saying that I took a second to look up a few other related passages, easy when using the index of words in the back of my Bible, otherwise known as the concordance.). Easy breezy, lemon squeezy. Anyway.
After doing little of that and for just a little bit, and then put 2 and 2 together, I found something so profoundly simple, so profoundly not shallow, and yet, at the same so blessedly hard for us to do, consistently. Well… let me share this journey with you and see if you also find these discoveries to be exciting.
This journey begins with Jesus, God himself, telling us what the greatest commands, ever given, are. I know you know what they are. But did you know that he does so in three of the four gospels? And did you know that in each one, he shares new insight into them? Oh yeah.
In Matthew he says, not only are the they the greatest, he also shares how all of the Law and the Prophets, his way of saying all of Scripture, and so every command and teaching Scripture contains, depends upon, hangs upon, is springs from these 2 commands (Matthew 23:34 - 40). Then… I’m sorry, would you care to hear what those 2 commands are? Alright, they are: To love God with our entire being, mind, body, heart, and soul. The second is a close second, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Now, in Mark, he then stresses their importance by saying that not only are these the greatest commands, and there is no command greater than these (Mark 12:28 – 31). It seems, that as far as God is concerned, the greatness of these two commands cannot be overstated. Then, in Luke, Jesus, again God himself, not only confirms that they are the greatest, but he also gives us our first insight into why they are the greatest. And here, things start to get eye-opening.
He says that the one who keeps them is the one who inherits eternal life (Luke 10: 26-28). We’ll continue to explore this throughout this episode. But think on this, God has just said that if we love him with our entire being and our neighbors as ourselves, we will be in a relationship with Him, through Jesus. Since this is the case, then, if we do not keep both of them we do not have eternal life, that is, we are not in a relationship with God. Let that sink in for just a second. If we do not love, we are not Christians, not true followers of Christ.
Now before going further, I want to make one thing very clear. An alternative gospel message is not being offered. For salvation, the restoration of a relationship with God, only comes through Jesus, through faith in Jesus alone. There are too many passages which tell us this; such as Ephesians 2:8-9. There is no other way. There is no other true gospel message.
So, keeping these commands is not a condition for being reunited with Christ. What is being said is, that if you truly have come to God through faith in Christ, if you are truly a Christian, then you do love both God and your neighbor. They go hand in hand. The one leads to the other. There is no other way.
Now that is a pretty big jump. If you do not love, you are not in a relationship with Christ. So, I wanted to check into this a little more, just to make sure I hadn’t missed the boat on this one. And I stumbled over other passages that say this exact thing. For instance, in 1 John, we are explicitly told that the one who does not love his neighbor does not even know God, for God is love (1 John 4:7, 8). We have to love or we don’t know God. The depths of this can be mind-blowing, for how is it even possible to have a relationship with someone we don’t even know?
Well, what about doing the right and holy things; isn’t that important in Christianity? If the discoveries we have made so far are worth thinking about, then it should be possible to find Scripture that tells us how loving and doing relate to each other… right? Well… in doing that little cross-reference thing, I found several passages that tell us how they relate. You know, several. More than 5 and less than a thousand. Several. But I only have time to share 4 of them here. So here we go, in no particular order.
We are told, in Romans, that is it the one who loves that fulfills the law because love does not harm a neighbor (Romans 13:8 – 10). It seems, then, that to truly do what is right and holy involves following the 2 great commands. Indeed, in John, I found where Jesus said that if we love him, we will keep his commands (John 14:15). What impresses me is that this is a simple statement of fact. Much like the statement, if you live, you will breathe. If you love you will keep. Are you hearing in-between the lines, so to speak? Our third passage, again in John, should help you do so. For in our next passage, Jesus says very plainly that it is only the one who loves is the one who keeps his commands. And he says that the ones who do not love, will not keep them (John 14:23, 24). Not that they don’t try, but that they don’t. Their attempts are failures in terms of truly keeping his commands. And in our fourth passage, from 1 Corinthians, Paul opens this up for us. He shares how, that even if we were to follow the letter of every command found in the Bible, perfectly, but did so without having love as the basis for it, without it being our motivation, or as he says, without love, then not only would these actions be meaningless, not only would they not truly be keeping Jesus’ commands, they will be obnoxious and repugnant as well (1 Corinthians 13:1 – 3).
In light of all this, to love (that is God with our entire being and our neighbors as ourselves) seems to be the most important thing a Christian must do. Otherwise, a) he is not a Christian for he truly has no relationship with God and b) it is the only way to live in keeping with what God wants you to do. To truly do what is right and holy.
Now, before this episode comes to a close, there are just 2 more things I really, really want to share with you. The first is what I found the Bible to say love is. This I found in 1 John, where it says, “This is love.” It gets no more straightforward than that. This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us so much that he came and died for us so that we would be able to enter into a loving relationship with him (1 John 4:10). And in Romans, we learn that he did this while we were still his enemies (Romans 5:8). While we did not like him or even know him. And we are also plainly told what a part of his love for us involves; that because he loved us this much, we must love others. And that it is only as we love others that God and his love live in us (1 John 4:11, 12). It is not until we are loving others does any of this happen. Love, then, is also that which gives itself to others; even when they are unlovely to us, when they are our enemies. Love is not about warm fuzzies or about how it makes us feel. It does not belong to the poet, songwriter, the hopeless romantic, nor to the one who abuses it.
And lastly, and this is very, very, very important. Jesus never says that you have to love perfectly in order to love him. Indeed, the only perfect love ever mentioned is God’s love. Don’t forget that! Learning to love takes growth and growth takes time. Jesus never expects more of us than what we are capable of; he only expects that we push ourselves so that what we are capable of increases each day. That is growth. Don’t worry about getting it right all the time. You won’t. Nobody but Jesus ever has. Paul even says this about himself, in Philippians 3:12. I’ll let you read that for yourself. It is where I am, it is where every Christian I have known is. Everyone starts where they are, accept Jesus’ invitation, and grow as he leads. That is love.
Well, what do you think? I’d love to hear from you, so please, go to simplenotshallow.com, and under the Simple Not Shallow Podcast section, find this episode, #2, and leave a comment for me there. Also, in the show notes, I’ll list all the verses I referenced, in the order and at the location in the transcript at which I referenced them. That way you can check me out to make sure I’m not totally in left field. Also, please take a second to rate this episode and subscribe to this podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify… or whichever service you use. Thank you. I’ll catch you next time.
