The New Commandment part 4
It's such a common question: What am I supposed to do? What does God expect of me? How do I serve Him? We find this in Mark chapter 12, verses 28-31, "And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Isreal; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these." What's it all about? Love. Love God and love others. That's the sum of the law and the prophets (we looked at that, "the golden rule," the other day). But the problem with that OLD commandment-- love your God with everything you are and everything you have-- is that before the cross we didn't know who we were and we didn't know what we had! It wasn't until Jesus finished the work and gave us the Holy Spirit--our love receptor--that we COULD love God and love others. That we COULD love God BY loving others. Which is why Jesus gave us the NEW Commandment: Love one another as Jesus loves us. Receive it first and then release it. Don't try to get something you think you don't have. And don't try to give something that you think you don't have. I think we get screwed up with love so many times because we try to give it in order to get it. "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine." And that's kind of what the Old Covenant was all about. Doing in order to be. Earning our bread by the sweat of our brow. But there was always one thing we lacked. And that one thing--even though it was real and present from the beginning--was love. We WERE loved, but we didn't KNOW we were loved. And because we didn't know it, we couldn't throw it. So, at the appointed time, Jesus came--just as we were--to tell us that we are loved and to show us that we are loved. He told us what the greatest expression of love is--laying down your life for your friends--and then He went to the cross and did that very thing. He SHOWED us what love is by giving His life for us and giving His life to us. He empowered us to obey the New Commandment instead of expecting us to try our best (and inevitably fail) to keep the Law of Moses. He brought us out of the old and into the new by giving us the one thing we needed. He brought us out of death and into life (not by loving us because He always has and always will love us) but by shining the light of the world so that we could SEE His love. And by seeing it, we might know it and believe it. And by believing it, experience it. And by experiencing it, share it. What's inside comes out. That's the natural order of things. But you have to know what's in there. You have to receive it in order to release it. And the best, most real way, TO receive it is BY releasing it!