Daily Devotion, March 24, 2021

 

Devotion:

Read Matthew 22:34-40.

Jesus’ answer here in Matthew’s gospel to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and in Mark’s gospel which includes to love the Lord “with all your strength” sounds so simple and yet complex.  It is truly a call to love God with our whole being and forever.

This is only a hint of even more of the ways in which God loves us.

Then Jesus says, “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Even though it sounds simple, Matthew has already written of Jesus’ teachings that “neighbor” is much broader than the neighbor next door. It includes our neighbors around the world and our enemies, too.

Jesus is quoting the commands from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. By the time the New Testament was written, there were over 700 laws to be kept for the Jewish people. But Jesus says here, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” 

Dr. Patrick Gray says, “This is not an axiom from which all other commandments may be derived, as one would work out a geometric proof. It seems that Jesus is asserting that love is a test of one’s true understanding of the law. It helps us understand what Jesus means when he says that he has come ‘not to abolish the law or the prophets…but to fulfill.’ (Matthew 5:17)” Jesus’ way of love, gives us our “why.”

Personal Worship Option:

With the Holy Spirit’s help, we learn what it means to love people who are not like us; what it means to love our enemies; what it means to love people who have wronged us and to forgive them; what it means when we have wronged others and to be forgiven; what it means when love moves us from words to service in action; what it means when love calls for healthy self-sacrifice and to walk the second mile with others who are suffering; what it means when love calls us to move from our ways of self-centeredness to love God and others, unconditionally. And as we learn more about this kind of love God calls us to, we learn even more how much God loves us and everybody else, too. 

Dear Lord, open my heart, soul, mind and strength to understand and follow you in your ways of love. Amen.