Day 653 – What do the 2 greatest laws look like in reality?…
Wednesday, July 28, 2021…
12:48 am…
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37 – 40
I’ve always seen that the two great laws of Christ can be deconstructed into four tiers that flow together harmoniously…
1) The first commandment means receiving the love of God, since He loved us first…
What does this mean?
It means God provides us with the greatest worth, significance, and security, exemplified in being important enough to die for.
This also means those three components of our psyche–worth, significance, and security–are rooted on something intangible, immovable, and consistent as opposed to a fluctuating, oscillating, inconsistent base.
2) The secondary component of the first command is for us to love God.
What does this mean?
It means absolute focus on God as the centre of our lives, intertwined in every facet of our thought-life and actions, expressed in selfless living the way Christ modelled.
God loves to see His children “getting along;” therefore, loving God manifests in the natural realm as loving our neighbour or as Jesus puts it, “And the second is like it…”
This moves us onto the second commandment.
3) The third tier comprising the first component of the second commandment is a need to learn how to love ourselves.
This is simplified in one famous quote: “…sin no more.” (John 8:11)
Once we recognise how much damage sin inflicts upon us and the people around us, to love ourselves is to guard our hearts against any sinful activity through a transformation of mind via surrender to God’s will.
The Spirit-led renewal of mind will reveal to us the clear self-harm of sin, especially the more pleasurable sins that can easily mask themselves as healthy or gratifying.
Instead of abstaining from sin by human strength, we will gladly and soberly want to keep away from it due to a changed heart inclination.
This is loving ourselves.
4) Finally, we have the fourth tier in “loving our neighbour.”
The full expression of the previous three tiers, manifests in the physical world around us in showing a relentless, cheerful, gladness in service to our neighbour—friend and foe alike—fuelled by the infinite ‘water of life’ that is Christ Himself.
To love our neighbour is to be an example to them of a sinless, blameless life while expressing to them all the love that a holy mindset naturally produces…“love your neighbour as yourself…”
Check out my novel ‘The Paradise Induction’ HERE: https://stephen-l-france.com/buy-the-novel/
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