Jesus declared, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’… – Matthew 22:37-39 (NIV)
People can make it really complicated when they think of all the things they need to be doing for God. They know they need to read the Bible, pray, witness, care for others, and on and on it goes. However, Jesus makes it real simple what we should be doing.
First, Jesus says to love God as Lord, which means with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. If we do this, we will automatically do things like pray. We’ll automatically want to read our Bible. Because we are loving Him, He’ll be our top priority.
Second, Jesus then said to love our neighbor as yourself. This means to treat others as you want to be treated. We naturally want to care about ourselves. Jesus says to love others in that same way. If you know that you’d like to have a friend, then be a friend. If you know that you don’t like being made fun of, then don’t do it to others. If you wouldn’t want someone to take advantage of you, then don’t do it to someone else.
This verse Jesus spoke about really brings a whole bunch of rules of do’s and don’ts and narrows it down to 2 things. Love God and love people. If you do this you’ll fulfill all the rest of the laws.
