Tag Archives: Great Commandment

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Love through acceptance and unity

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 22-minute message. Or watch the video here on Facebook (the message starts about 24 minutes into the recording). Or read the text summary below.

During this Lent 2023, we are reflecting on Christ’s repeated command to “love one another“. (Remember that ‘one another’ and ‘each other’ refers to our brothers and sisters in Christ, that is, our local and global congregation. This is not to say that we don’t need to love people outside the church! No!! But it is true that Jesus emphasises the love we have for one another within the church, because it is by this that people will know that we are his disciples and will become curious to find out more about this Jesus.)

This week we focus in on the many passages that describe this love that we have for one another as being characterised by acceptance and unity.

In John 17:20-26 Jesus emphasises this unity. In John 17, Jesus prays for his disciples and then for all believers, including us in the future who came to believe through their message. He prays “that all of them may be one”, and again “that they may be one”, and then clarifies that he’s praying that we (Christians) may be one “as we are one” – that is, as Christ and the Father are one. That is the quality of oneness that Jesus wants us to experience with each other! The same kind of oneness that the Father, Son and Spirit experience within the Holy Trinity. And so Jesus continues to pray “that they may be brought to complete unity” – not just any old unity, not just grudging agreement or apathetic compliance, but complete unity. Jesus has very high expectations for the kind of closeness and harmony he wants us to experience among each other in the church.

And he then says, “Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Sjoe, that’s a big ‘THEN’! It means that our oneness, our unitedness, is a condition for our witness. In other words, if we are fractured, splintered, out of touch with each other, unloving and critical towards each other, all these things – then we cannot be Christ’s witness to the world. Remember what Jesus said just a few chapters earlier: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). It cannot be clearer than that, can it? We have to be unified, we have to be one. It is Jesus’ core command. 

So, how is the church doing? I leave you to reflect on how your own local church community is doing in relation to unity and oneness. But when we look more broadly at my denomination - the global Anglican Communion - like many denominations, eish, we are doing badly. Our church is on the brink of fracturing right now, over different views of sexuality and gender, and particularly over what defines a marriage. I think there is nothing wrong with different views on things - difference can be refreshing and difference is built into the New Testament image of the church (as we'll soon see). But when different views become hostile dogmatism, toxic judgement and name calling (like 'apostacy' and 'blasphemy' and 'heresy'), then we have totally lost what Jesus has called us to - to unity and oneness. Such dogmatic stances are a recipe for disaster.

But let us continue to unpack what the Scriptures have to say about love as acceptance and unity. In Ephesians 4:1-16, Paul picks up on Jesus’ words about the love that the Father has for him being in us, and that he may be in us just as the Father is in him. This is the language of interpenetration – that we are bound up together as one, as a body, where all the parts are interconnected. This image of the church as the Body of Christ is most fully developed in 1 Corinthians 12. This chapter is so well known that I’m not going to talk about it here, but it is a great chapter to read again in this context.

In Ephesians 4, though, Paul writes repeatedly about oneness. In verses 4-6 he uses ‘one’ seven times! “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Those last words are again about interpenetration, aren’t they?) This oneness of the church community is strongly emphasised in Paul’s thinking.

But he quickly goes on to speak about the diversity of the church community: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service” (Eph 4:11-12). Here we have extensive diversity – different gifts, abilities and roles – a kaleidoscope of difference.

Paul deftly hold these apparent opposites – oneness and diversity – together. In v12 he says that all these parts of the body are “held together by every supporting ligament”, that Christ “is the head” that helps us walk in the same direction” (v15), which enables the “the body of Christ [to] be build up until we all reach unity in the faith” (v12-13), that we must “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (v3) and that this requires us to “be completely humble and gentle, patient, bearing with one another in love” (v2). All this language speaks of intention, commitment and effort towards unity – it won’t just fall out of the sky – we have to work at it. We have to work at love.

When it comes to the things of the church and to the witness of the church to the world, Jesus and Paul repeatedly emphasise both our diversity and our unity. But UNITY or ONENESS is always the overriding message. And LOVE is the key, essential and only strong-enough force to bridge the gap between unity and diversity. We must love one another, we must accept each other and be united, we must become one body, we must celebrate and accept differences – this is Christ’s repeated command: acceptance and unity.

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The primacy of love

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 14-minute message. Or watch the video here (the message starts about 26 minutes into the recording). Or read the text summary below.

This sermon is the first in a series of five on the Lent theme, “Love one another”. This theme is part of a larger theme on ‘Identity’, which our Diocese is focusing on this year – who are we as Christians, as the church? Within this broad theme of Identity, our parish is focusing on Jesus’ command to ‘Love one another’. And today, our particular focus is on the primacy of love.

Our Gospel reading for today (John 15: 1-17) has a strong emphasis on remaining in Christ as he remains in his Father and in us, and on remaining in Christ’s love, as he remains in his Father’s love. This passage ends with, “This is my command: Love each other!” (John 15:17). It echoes an earlier passage (John 13:34) where he says, “A new command I give you: love one another”. This is a repeat of his Great Commandment (Matthew 22, Mark 12 and Luke 13): to love God with all you have, and to love your neighbour as yourself.

About this Great Commandment, Jesus says, hang all the law and the prophets. Gal 5:14 echoes this, “The entire law Is summed up in a single command: love your neighbour as yourself.” And Romans 13:9 similarly says, All the commands and “whatever other command there may be are summed up in this one command: Love your neighbour as yourself. … Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.” You can hear that this command is repeated again and again across the New Testament.

In addition to the command to love one another, there are dozens of other passages in the New Testament that speak about ‘one another’ or ‘each other’ and they all seem to refer to our relationships with people within the church – with other Christians, in the household of faith. There is supposed to be a special bond of love among Christians. As Jesus says in John 13:35, “By this [love that you have for one another], everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”. We are what Paul later describes as the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 23.

The big question is: Are we exemplifying this kind of love for one another here in our church?

This love that Jesus talks about incessantly is more than just behaviours; it is our very identity. Deut 6:6-9 unpacks how the great command of God, to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, is to become the very fabric of life: “The commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and why you walk along the road, when lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

You can hear from this how central the Great Commandment is to God. It is a summation of the entire law, because it is the primary value of God. In Jesus, the command to love each other is the summation of God’s revelation to humanity and his central and persistent message. This love for each other reflects the very heart of God. We are called to develop a culture of love – a pattern of living that is deeply embedded in our habitual practices as a community. Our love for one another here in the church should be so engrained that we barely think about it.

There is a lot of caring in this church, but I think we are not yet living up to Jesus’ example and expectations. During this Lent we want to immerse ourselves in this central teaching of Jesus and this central value of God. Let us become deliberately conscious and mindful of how we interact with each other, and purposefully work to be more loving and more caring towards each other.

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Our words matter

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 23-minute message. Or watch the video of the message on Facebook (the message starts at about 31 minutes).

Our Gospel and New Testament readings today are nicely synchronised.

Mark 7:1-23 has Jesus telling us that we are not defiled by disregard of human customs nor by what we put into our bodies (though he is talking here about religious purity (see verses 1-8 for context), not about drugs, alcohol, sugar, etc.), but rather by what comes out of our hearts and mouths (sexual immorality, theft, envy, arrogance and so on). He emphasises that it is what comes out of our mouths that is important, not what we put into our mouths.

Jesus criticises the religious leaders of his time for for emphasising human norms of behaviour and forsaking the command of God. And what is the command of God? Simple. To love God and to love our neighbour. These are the most important things in life – more important than any other command. Human rules about how to behave, what to eat, how to eat and so on, are irrelevant when it comes to our standing before God. What is important is what is in our hearts and how this comes out in our attitudes, words and actions. What should be in our hearts and what should manifest in our lived lives is LOVE – love for God and love for others.

James seems to have remembered this teaching from Jesus and picks it up in his letter, James 1:19-27, where James says that we should be quick to listen to others and to the Word of God (these are the things we should quickly allow in) but that we should be slow to speak and slow to anger (speaking and anger are things we should be slow to put out).

Being quick to listen means to be open and receptive to people around us, to make time for them, to be interested in and concerned for them. Our default response to people should always be to slow down and listen, listen with care, listen carefully, and listen with love. And we should also be quick to listen to the word of God – to the scriptures – which he says is “planted in us” (v21) like a tree, that can take root and grow and produce fruit. And the fruit of this Word/tree is our attitudes, words and actions – these should emerge out of the Word that we have allowed to grow in us, out of the love of God in our hearts.

On the other hand, James cautions us that we should be slow to speak and slow to anger. He is clearly speaking about our relationships with other people – in v27 he says that the religion that God wants (accepts as pure and faultless) is for us to to look after widows and orphans in distress (that is, to take care of those who are vulnerable) and keep ourselves from being polluted by the world (that is, not to conform to human customs and worldly norms of behaviour).

James speaks particularly about the tongue, which he says we must “keep a tight reign on”, like a wild horse that is ready to bolt. He actually speaks at length about the dangers of the tongue in chapter 3, where he says, “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” We have to watch (and yes, even censor) our words, because they are more powerful than we think – whether they are words of healing and restoration or words of criticism and judgement.

Rather, says James, we should be slow to speak and slow to anger. This reminds me of how God is often described in the scriptures, as a “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (e.g., Psalm 86:15). We should be like God – quick to love and slow to anger.

There has been a shift in the world since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. He and his followers shifted social norms about how we use words. Speaking out whatever we think about people, and saying it bluntly and without regard for kindness or niceness has become a new norm. The attitude of not self-censoring and saying whatever one wants has been valorised – made into a virtue. We think we have a right to say whatever we want and that any kind of consideration of how our words might impact someone else is just a form of bleeding-heart leftism, political correctness or a sinister censorship of our right to free thought.

But no! This is completely out of alignment with the example and teaching of Christ and of his disciples! For Jesus, love and consideration for others is THE highest command (along with loving God) and checking what comes out of heart and mouths is clear in Jesus’ teaching in Mark 7. James takes up Jesus’ teaching and unpacks it even more, with strong warnings about reining in (i.e. censoring) our tongues. Just read James 3 and see for yourself.

The path of the Christ-follower involves being full of love, quick to listen, slow to speak, abounding in love and desiring to build up others. Our words matter. This is the way of Christ.

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Friends of Christ

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 24-minute sermon. Or watch the video on Facebook (message starts at about 27 minutes). Or read the brief text summary below.

In John 15:12-17, Jesus declares that we are his friends. Imagine that! Friends of Christ!

Indeed, there are only a few times Jesus uses the word ‘friend’ – a total of 22 in the Gospels, of which two thirds are in parables or Jesus referring to others’ critique of him (e.g., he is a friend of sinners). In two places he refers to his disciples as ‘my friends’ and in three he speaks to individuals – the man lowered by his friends through the roof, Lazarus and Judas (just as Jesus was being arrested). And then 3 times in John 15.

Friendship means many things to us – loyalty, openness, trust, dependability, truth, safety, comfort, and so on. And Jesus is all these things as our friend.

In John 15, he asks two things of us as his friends.

First, he says we are his friends if we do what he commands. And what does his command? That we love each other – this command comes up repeatedly in this passage. When we read that we must love others ‘as’ Christ loves us, that might seem a bit daunting. It implies a standard that is above us – to love like Christ loves. But the Greek word can also be translated ‘from’, implying a source beneath or from within us. In this sense, we are called to love others out of the abundant love that we already experience from Christ. His command is simple – not easy, but simple: love each other or have a heart for each other. As 1 John 4:5 says, God’s “commands are not burdensome.” Indeed, there is just one command – to love others

Second, Jesus says in v15, that he no longer calls us servants (who don’t know their master’s business) but friends (because he has shared with us everything God has told him). In effect, Jesus says that we are friends in that we are privy to the mind and heart of God. God reveals to us what is important to God, so we can follow God out of knowing and understanding, rather than out of blind or fearful obedience. That’s what is means to be a friend. And this passage tells us that there is one primary motivation behind everything that God does – one primary point on God’s agenda – love!

So, this week, I encourage you to reflect on what it means and feels like to be loved be God and to be Christ’s friend, to experience the fullness of Christ’s love for us, and to share it with those around us.

You are Christ’s friend!

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He wants it all!

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 10-minute message. Or watch the YouTube video below, or read the text summary after that.

In Luke 11:42-44, Jesus issues a series of ‘woes’ (or warnings) against the Pharisees, who were a group of highly religious, devout Jewish people. They were also religious leaders, so these woes are issued against both those who think of themselves as highly religious and against those who are occupy leadership positions in the church (including both clergy and laypeople).

Today, we focus on just Luke 11:42:

Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

Jesus draws a contrast between tithing (specifically tithing of food, but we can apply it equally to tithing of money) and justice (which can be considered the love of neighbour) and the love of God.

Jesus draws this contrast frequently in the Gospels. It is the contrast between the inner (heart) life and the outer (public) life. He repeatedly calls for alignment between these two, and he speaks out particularly harshly against those who emphasise the outer life and neglect the inner life.

The story of the widow’s mite in Luke 21:1-4 illustrates this very nicely:

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

While outwardly, the rich gave more money than the widow, they gave only a tiny percent of what they had, while the little she gave was all she had. The percentage of what is given is more important than the absolute amount that is given. The motivation for giving is more important than the absolute amount given. The external appearance of the money is not important; rather, the inner heart out of which the money is given is what is important to Jesus.

Jesus also emphasises social justice in this passage, as well as love of God. In Luke 10:27, Jesus answers the question about what we must do to inherit eternal life with the Great Commandment:

“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

This vertical and horizontal love is absolutely foundational to what it means to be an authentic Christian or follower of Christ. Jesus issues these woes against the Pharisees because they had neglected these fundamental expressions of authentic faith – they had neglected to love God and they had neglected social justice.

We would, however, be wrong to conclude that Jesus is saying the outward expression of faith is unimportant, and only the heart is important. NO! In fact, Jesus stresses that BOTH are important! He wraps up this verse:

You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

Tithing – giving of our material resources – remains important! He wants:

  • Social justice
  • Love of God
  • Our money

In short, Jesus wants it all!

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Love one another

Click here to listen to this 16-minute message.

I have been redeployed from the church I’ve attended for over 20 years (St Martin-in-the-Fields) to a new church, not too far away (St Stephens, Lyttelton) as part of my curacy. Today was the first time I have preached to this new parish, so it was a good opportunity to lay down what is most important to my faith and that what is most prominent in my preaching. And it is this:

God is most essentially and completely LOVE. The three persons of the Godhead (Father, Son and Spirit) have been in eternal relationship with one another since before the creation of time and space. It is the profound love between these three persons that makes the one being. God created time and space out of a fullness of love. God created humanity out of a generosity of love, to be shared. And God’s actions throughout human history embody and describe love. Love that is fierce, generous, extravagant, radically inclusive, steadfast and unshakable.

Today’s reading from John 13:34-35 sets out Jesus’ command to us:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

In this message, I provide the context in which Jesus delivered this message – a context that represents on the crisis points in his ministry, characterised by betrayal, denial and isolation.

And I set out what is ‘new’ about old command to love, viz. the source of our capacity to love and the missional impact of our love for one another.

Let the love of God be the centre of your life.

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Being God’s Beloved: Day 23: The Great Commandment

Being God’s Beloved: Reflections on God’s Love.

One day, Jesus is asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” (Matthew 22:36). The question is similarly phrased in Mark 12:28, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

It is wonderful that Jesus was asked this question, because his answer points us to Jesus’ understanding of the heart of God’s Will.[1] After all, the Law is, essentially, an expression of God’s will for how we ought to be as human beings, and how we ought to relate to the world around us. The question could just as well have been, “What is the centre of God’s Will?”

Jesus answers, in Matthew’s version,

“‘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).

Mark’s version is similar, but has some differences:

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31).

The key difference in Mark is the inclusion of the Shema, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” which precedes the command to love God in the source for this first commandment in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. The Shema was recited twice daily by Jewish people, as a statement of faith or creed. Devout Jews also have the Shema written on the doorposts of their home and on phylacteries tied to their foreheads, in keeping with the instruction of Moses in Deuteronomy 6:6-9.[2] In so doing, Mark’s version emphasises that the commands to love are in response to who God is and what God does.

Mark also differs by the inclusion of “and with all your strength”, though this is in fact part of the source in Deuteronomy. On the other hand, “and with all your mind” is not in Deuteronomy, but included in both Matthew and Mark.

Scholars may debate the reasons for these differences, but what strikes us from the first commandment to love God is the repeated use of all. The love for God that is described here is holistic and all-encompassing. Jesus is describing a kind of love that draws on every facet of our being. He is saying that our entire self is to be turned towards God in love. This is not merely emotional love, such as one might see on the soap operas. Nor is it an intellectual love one might read in the philosophers. Nor is it the physical love one might experience in the bedroom. Rather, this is a love that draws on the whole person.

We have looked previously at the concept of chesed, meaning God’s unfailing loving-kindness towards those with whom God is in a covenant relationship. That love for us – that chesed – encompasses the whole of us. God loves every facet of who we are. God does not merely love our spirit, or the good deeds that we do, or the virtuous thoughts that we think. God loves everything about us. And so, our reciprocated love for God must be similarly holistic. “Because the whole [person] is the object of God’s covenant love, the whole [person] is claimed by God for himself.”[3]

The second part of the commandment, which Jesus says is “like” the first, is to love our neighbour as ourselves, and is drawn from Leviticus 19:18. This involves a similarly whole-hearted, whole-person love for one’s neighbour. We recall the parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10:25-37, which clarifies who “our neighbour” is – everyone is our neighbour. The kind of love that Jesus calls us to, in relation to other people, has no boundaries – it is a universal love for all of humanity, both collectively (meaning, a general love for all people) and individually (meaning, we are called to love each individual personally and specifically). On Day 16 we said that love is “an active desire for the well-being of the neighbour, and for communion with him or her, based on a recognition of the neighbour’s unique worth”.[4]

Jesus closely connects these two familiar commandments:  “This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it” (Matthew 22:38-39a). Although there are two answers, he was asked for the greatest commandment, not two commandments. Clearly, Jesus sees these as so closely intertwined that they are as one.

A little bit of Hebrew grammar will give us insight into an important theological and practical aspect of the Great Commandment. Both the Old Testament sources of the Great Commandment (Deuteronomy and Leviticus) use the jussive form of ‘love’ in the Hebrew.[5] The jussive is a way of expressing one’s volition or desire or intention, but is not as strong as an imperative, which is much more like a direct command to do something.[6] The jussive is thus a subtler and gentler way of expressing choice. In translating jussive Hebrew verbs into English, it is often helpful to put the words ‘let’ or ‘may’ before the verb, such as ‘let him love’ or ‘may he love’.

In the two calls to love, the Hebrew uses the jussive form, thus they are not translated as imperatives or commands, “You must love the Lord” and “You must love your neighbour”. This is important because such a command can easily degenerate into an external performing of the appearance of love, without a true volition, choice or intention to love. While one can easily command someone to perform an activity (such as, “Don’t hit your little sister”), it is usually counterproductive to command someone to feel or desire something (such as, “Enjoy playing with your little sister”). In such cases, it is far better to use a gentler form, which the jussive allows (“May you develop an enjoyment for playing with your little sister”). Thus these are not commands to “Love”. Rather they are encouragements that could be better translated, “You are to love…” or “May you love…” The call to love is more to cultivate love in one’s heart than to merely perform loving actions.

The only places in the Old Testament where the jussive form of the verb ‘love’ is used are in Deuteronomy 6:5 and 11:1 (both of which say, “Love the Lord your God”) and Leviticus 19:18 and 19:34 (which say, “Love your neighbour as yourself” and “Love him as yourself”).[7] Together, they express God’s singular Will, God’s central volition, which is, “You are to love”.

There is just one Divine Will – God desires that we love. This singular Will to love is expressed into two spheres of life – in our relationship with God and in our relationship with other people.[8] But it is just one Will. Thus, these two commandments are, in fact, one command, the command to love.

The first expression of love is towards God – we love God because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). Our love for God is always reactive, in that we are responding to what God has initiated. We are never the initiators with God, because God already loved us before we were conceived. We are always responding to God.

But our love for our neighbour, which is the second expression of love, is different. We do not love our neighbour because our neighbour first loved us. No! The parable of the Good Samaritan makes this abundantly clear – the injured man was in no position to love anyone, and so the Samaritan’s love for him is something that the Samaritan initiated. However, even this love for our neighbour springs forth as a response to God’s love for us. It is as we become more fully aware of and experience God’s love for us that our capacity to love others, particularly those who are unlovely or our enemies, develops. We love others because God first loved us. Thus, the wellspring of our love for both God and our neighbours is God’s love for us.

God does not instruct us to love as one might instruct a soldier. Rather, God does two things to move us to love. First, God loves us first. God sets the example. God fills our hearts with love. God persists in loving us even when we spurn God’s love. God loves fully and unconditionally and extravagantly. God’s entire mission to humanity is motivated by love. Everything that God does towards us is an expression of that love. And second, God moves us towards greater love by exercising Divine Will. God prompts us to love with the call to love, with the reminder that as much as we are loved by God we are called to love others. But God does not coerce us to love others. As our hearts are filled with the love of God, love will overflow from our beings and spill into our relationships with family, friends, colleagues, strangers and even enemies. God woos us to become loving.

May it be that you love God with the whole of your being, and your neighbour as yourself.

Meditation for the Day

Reflect on everything that you have learned so far about God’s love for you. In light of that, how do you feel about expressing the fullness of this love in your relationship to God and to your neighbour?

Prayer for the Day

God of infinite love, thank you that you loved me long before I loved you. Continue to cultivate in me an ever deeper love for you and for other people, including those I find particularly hard to love.

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[1] Lane, W. L. (1974). The Gospel of Mark. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, p. 432.

[2] France, R. T. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, p. 845.

[3] Lane, p. 432.

[4] Woodhead, in Marshall, p. 27.

[5] France, p. 846.

[6] Ellis, R. R. (2006). Learning to read Biblical Hebrew: An introductory grammar. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, pp. 174-175.

[7] France, p. 846.

[8] France, p. 843.