05.05 | First, Love
Mark 12:18-44
‘Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”’
Mark 12:29-31
When I started secondary school, I started playing rugby.
Rugby was a sport I’d never played before. I’d never watched a single game, I had no idea of the rules, and I didn’t know anyone who played it.
I picked up the main things pretty quickly. I was a quick runner, so I knew that, if I got the ball, I should make for the try line. I got that the ball needed passed backwards but could be kicked forwards, and that tackling should be done around the legs.
That was all good. The problem for me was in the array of other rules that make up the game. Nobody explained them to me, and, for some reason, it didn’t occur to me to do some research myself. And so I continued playing, a kind of Forrest Gump of the rugby pitch, running when I got the ball and otherwise not always being clear on what was going on. In those early months of Year 7, I quite enjoyed it. But I didn’t understand what was required of me.
I think sometimes this question comes to us in our faith.
What is required of me?
Or, put another way, what does God want from me?
The scribe who approaches Jesus today has something like this question in his heart. He’s a specialist in the Old Testament Law, and so he knows that there are hundreds of rules and practices that make up the Old Testament. But his question shows something: it shows that he realises that, in this Law, there also seems to be some kind of hierarchy of priority. Some things seem more emphasised than others. There seem to be greater laws governing the lesser ones.
And so he brings his question:
Which commandment is the greatest?
There’s something so beautifully unexpected in Jesus’ answer.
The greatest is this:
Love the Lord your God.
What does God want from me?
He wants you to learn to love Him. This, before and above and at the root of all else. Not to obey Him or learn things about Him or do what He tells you to do.
But love.
Love Him so greatly that this love fills your whole being — saturating your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength, soaking into your deepest motives and your every thought and your every action and the deepest recesses of what makes you you. Love Him until your absolute joyful delight in Him floods your whole life, radiant with the beauty of His glory.
And when this love, Jesus suggests to us, is partnered with a similar, growing, love of those around us, we’ll find that we’ve fulfilled every single thing that is required of us.
What kind of a God is this?
It’s not the God of rules and restrictions. It’s not the God of criticism and disappointment. It’s not the God who endlessly demands more exhausting things from me.
It’s, far more simply, the God who desires me.
What does He require of me? What are the rules of this game?
Friends, it is so simple.
Learn to be loved.
Learn to love.
And there you will find the completion of your soul.
Reflect:
When I ask what God requires of me, what kind of things come to mind? How long is that list?
Lay these things down today, one by one. Come back to the simplicity of His essentials: To love Him who loves you so greatly, that you will spend all eternity exploring this love.
Pray:
Father in heaven,
When I consider your requirements,
I often have a long list in my mind of things that I think you must require of me:
Things I should be doing,
And things I shouldn’t be doing.
My mind gets so cluttered with all this stuff.
And yet, somehow,
In all this trying harder,
I seem to gain little but increasing fatigue.
Today, I turn.
Today, I simplify.
I return to the childlike walk of one whose life is given to no greater task,
And no greater ambition,
Than to live in growing love for you;
Where all else—
Every activity and thought and feeling and intention and plan —
May be the overspill of my delight
In the Father who loved me first.
In Jesus’ beautiful Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
1 Samuel 20-21 | Psalm 58