(Audio)
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
We sometimes test Jesus in a similar way. We try to create a hierarchical list of commandments so that we can set some against others to justify a state of complacency. It is true that certain commandments have priority. Some things are intrinsically evil. Some goods are greater than others. But the ultimate schema that Jesus gives us does not allow any command to be set against any other.
"You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
In two commandments, commandments which cannot ultimately be separated, contain every other principle and precept. Commandments are meant to point us toward love. Love is the overarching priority. It tolerates no lukewarmness, countenances no excuses, insisting always on the good of the other for the sake of the other. It is the single force that can give unified direction to otherwise highly fragmented lives. It is doubtlessly this love which Ruth saw in and indeed received from Naomi.
But Ruth said, "Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you!
For wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge,
your people shall be my people, and your God my God."
Ruth experienced the close connection between the first and second commandments. The love of neighbor she received and returned caused her to also long to enter into that same exchange of love with Naomi's God.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (see John 13:35)
Again, there is no way to separate this love of neighbor from love of God. Without one both are deficient.
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen (see First John 4:20).
Though of course we cannot love neighbor or God without God first putting his own love into our hearts.
and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (see Romans 5:5).
God has poured his love into us. Let's stop testing Jesus and let it loose!
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD, his God,
Who made heaven and earth,
the sea and all that is in them.
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