SUNDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2018

Loving God without loving people is impossible. However, loving people without loving God is impossible as well. Loving people is the direct result of our love to God as the real love always bringing out an expression. Loving people without loving God will bring anyone to a common pitfall of just being a people pleaser and will exhaust themselves because that such of wrong love is easily drain out!

Jesus said that the second commandment is just like the first and the great commandment. We can not just pursue the first and ignore the second one. And we can not get the second unless we have the first. These two commandments need to be present together, even at the same time! And these two commandments also wrap up the whole teaching of Jesus and also the Bible!

³⁷ Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and great commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40 NKJV

LOVING GOD SERIOUSLY

Before Jesus moved forward to the second commandment, Jesus would like to emphasize the first commandment clearly and boldly! Jesus said that first of all we must love God with ALL our heart, with ALL our soul, and with ALL our mind. Why God is so serious about this commandment?

Loving God is totally different with loving another thing because God Himself is love 1Jn.4:8, He is the substance of love and He will never ever change Jam.1:17. Loving God is about our response to His love! God want His people to take this commandment seriously so that we can have a full bonding between God’s love and our response. Only when we love Him with all our heart, so we can fully absorb God’s love into our heart. He loves us with an everlasting love Jer.31:3. God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us Rm.5:8. To make us understand and receive the fullness of His love, we must love Him seriously, otherwise we will never understand the fullness of His love!

It is not too difficult to love God. The only thing that we need to do is keep His word! The Bible which given to us is not meant to only be read but more than that we must keep it, obey it, do it!

²³ Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. ²⁴ He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me. John 14:23-24 NKJV

Whenever we start our Bible reading, let’s understand that we are not only going to read it and just finish our daily reading schedule. We must stick to our commitment reading the Bible everyday because we love Him, and we want to keep His word in our heart and do that seriously. Bible is the love letter from God to us, so we can understand, feel, taste, and even receive God’s love into our life. We are meant to do our daily reading with ALL our heart, with ALL our soul, and with ALL our mind! Reading your Bible is meant to be a wonderful moment when we are receiving and refuelling God’s love within us. How wonderful is that when Jesus and Father God will come to us and make Their home with us whenever we keep His word!

LOVING GOD vs. LOVING PEOPLE

While loving God will bring us to receive His love more and deeper, loving people is not always make us feeling good! While God will never ever change, people may always change time by time! While God is always holy and is always light, in Him is no darkness at all, sometimes we may feel worried about what’s behind other people’s heart because people like to hide something behind anything!

Sometimes our love could be misunderstood. Sometimes we may receive not a good response for our love. Even sometimes people may repay our love with a very bad betrayal, just like what happen with Jesus when He got betrayal from Judas for all love that He already gave to him! Loving people could attract a risk even could bring more pain and hurt ourselves.

However, Jesus commanded His people to love the neighbour and this command is not the inferior to the first one. Jesus said that the next command is just like the first command! The Greek word translated to ‘like it’ also means ‘together’ and also ‘at the same place or time’.

²⁰ If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? ²¹ And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also. 1John 4:20-21 NKJV

Loving God will bring us to the right step of loving people, not in our own way but in God’s way. The commandment to love our neighbour never be meant to compromise with another people’s sin. Loving people must not sacrifice our love and our relation to God. Loving people must bring ourselves closer to God and must not distract our relationship with God. Loving people could drain out our energy, our feeling, our money, and also our time. That’s why Jesus commanded us to love God at the first priority and the first foundation before we start to build our love to our neighbour.

¹¹ For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹² Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, ¹³ each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. 1Corinthians 3:11-13 NKJV

Paul said that we need to build everything in the foundation of Jesus Christ. If anyone tries to build on another foundation the result will be miserable and broken easily. Humanity love could not endure for long time. But whenever we have God’s love always refreshed and renewed within us, so we are able to step out and loving people with a fresh God’s love and not only with humanity love. Whenever we feel very tired to loving people, we need to examine ourselves if we still have a good time to express our love to God. We always need to recharge God’s love within us, so we are able to spread God’s love to this world!

CONCLUSION: LET’S SPREAD THE REAL LOVE

Only God’s love is the real love. The real love is everlasting, and nothing is able to change that love! As a believer, we must plug in to that real love, so we can spread that real love! Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails 1Cor.13:4-8. It will be very difficult to produce that kind of love with the capacity of a human being. To be able to spread that real love we need to be a “super-human”! Not with our might nor our strength, but by the power of Holy Spirit, so we are able to keep His commandments, we are able to love our neighbour, and we are able to spread that real love to this world. Let’s keep loving God and loving people. AMEN.

¹⁵ “If you love Me, keep My commandments. ¹⁶ And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. John 14:15-18 NKJV