Matthew 22

Jesus covered so much stuff in His teachings that it makes it hard to look at an entire chapter sometimes. In just this one chapter He covers the afterlife, salvation, taxes, God's commandments, and His own deity. The thing that really sticks out to me, though, is the greatest commandment. Jesus succinctly sums up everything about salvation, God, the Christian life, all of it in the space of two sentences.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." And "Love your neighbor as yourself."

All of the things that the Law said needed to be done were not possible for humans to achieve. God Himself had to take the form of a man to fulfill the Law. All God really wanted was love, though. Not sappy Hollywood love, but truly devoted conviction and commitment to Him.

I heard that a man was once asked if he would prefer to have food or a woman that loved him. And he replied that he'd prefer the woman because if she really loved him she would make sure that he had all the food he needed. God's the same way. He would prefer that He have our love over anything else because when we truly love Him, we can't help but be committed to trying to uphold as much else of the Law as possible.

If we are focused solely on loving the Law and upholding it for the sake of the Law, we are self-centered and prideful which then creates a situation whereby we are looking to blame others for their shortcomings. When we are blaming others, then, we are not loving them as ourselves. We are not recognizing that they are also people that are trying to follow God and trying to achieve their own hopes and dreams. We forget that we are part of a society and we forget that God has placed us in that society to reflect Him rather than reflect ourselves.

Remember that loving God helps to keep us focused and that recognizing that others are people, too, helps to keep us useful.