Commanded to Love ?!?
Mar 12:29-31 Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, (30) and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' (31) The second is this: 'You must love your neighbor as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these."
I believe I have, for most of my Christian life, misunderstood what Jesus said about loving God. In human terms, it seems ridiculous to "order someone to love you". You can't order someone to love you. It doesn't work that way. Is it any different for God? He is, afterall, the one and only God. He, of course, has the right to expect us to love him. He made us and sustains us. We exist for his pleasure and purpose. STILL does he really command and order us to love him "or else"?
As we discussed this passage in our small group last Friday I gained another perspective. It dawned on me that Jesus is talking in "commandments" because he was asked a question about commandments. The teacher of the law asked, "Which is the most important commandment?" At that time, they not only had the 10 commandments, but also all of the commands both positive (do's) and negative (don't s) from the Old Testament. If that were not enough, they had added hundreds and hundreds of other commands to clarify the OT commands. What was meant by "keep the Sabbath holy"? They had it nailed down exactly.
Jesus answers this man saying the Greatest commandment is to Love! And in this context, we have taken it and tried to further define and clarify it just like the Pharisees of Jesus' day. What does he mean by "love"? Well, you need to read your Bible, pray, witness, bear fruit, obey, etc.
Whatever happened to "we love because he first loved us"? "Not that we loved God, but that God loved us" - how does this square with a God who commands us to love? The man framed his question and made the issue "commandments", and Jesus answers him in that vein, BUT I believe Jesus was saying something like this: "You are asking me 'what does God want from me?', so I going to tell you. God wants a love relationship with you. He wants to love you and be loved by you in return. Loving God and loving your neighbor is what life is all about. God wants you to love! Got it?"
God certainly has the right to our love and the right to command us to love him, but scripture says that God LOVES US and that he has revealed his love in Jesus Christ. We respond to his love, by giving him our love. He wants us to live lives of love.
10:37:26 PM 
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