Jesus answered him, “...And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. Mark 12:29-31
True
Christian life is characterized by both vertical and horizontal
relationships. As we come to God, we find this as an unbreakable rule.
Jesus sees loving God as inseparable from loving one's neighbours also.
You can't have one without the other. In the language of the apostle
James, we can say, show me your love for your neighbours and I will show
you your love for God.
The
first lesson we must learn as we begin to seek to grow in intimacy with
God is that we have to love people. This is understandable because the
God that we want to be intimate with is a God that loves people.
Therefore, if we are to make any appreciable progress in our desire to
be intimate with God, then we will have to learn to love those that He
loves. The reason we have to love people is because they are made in the
image of God, and that God loves them to the extent that He became a
man and died on the cross for each person. If we are looking for a
reason why we should love people, this is sufficient.
Sometimes
we mistake growing in the knowledge of the letters of the word of God
with growing in the knowledge of God. Yes, the latter is dependent on
the former, yet, the former alone does not translate into knowing God.
Until we begin to apply the learned letter to our lives, we can't say
that we have known God. Growing in the knowledge of God is dependent on
the application of the word of God to our lives to the extent that it
becomes the norm by which our lives are governed. So, if you love God,
it will be seen in how you treat people.
Toni
