Love God, Love Neighbor: The Gospel in Two Commands

What really matters? You're going to want to know that the people you love know it. You're going to want to know that you acted with kindness throughout your life, that you were really able to see the people around you, they were more than a nuisance, that you really saw them. You see that clarity that comes at the end when you only have hours to live that clarity? Jesus invites us, each of us, to live in that kind of clarity now. Life is fragile. [00:57:48] (34 seconds)  #liveWithClarity

Right here, right now, two commandments, one word, love. Rabbi Hillel got it, Rumi got it, Jesus got it, and he named it out loud to that uppity lawyer one day. Love is the center of everything. Now, I promised you I'd circle back to the question I posed at the very beginning. What if you knew you had days, maybe just hours to live? What would really matter? [00:56:59] (30 seconds)  #loveIsEverything

The more you give away, the more you get back. That's it. That's the only thing that operates that way. Get more by spending. I wish money worked like that, don't you? Love works that way. It's it's like this, the path of love that we long for runs completely parallel to the path of giving it away. [00:53:11] (25 seconds)  #giveToReceiveLove

The suggestion is love is there, it's just that we've created so many walls inside, walls that that not only keep people out, but keep us locked in, keep us defended and isolated, hoarding what love we find. And Jesus, in this passage, two commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Jesus said, take the walls down. [00:52:23] (30 seconds)  #breakInnerWalls

A black preacher friend of mine used to encourage younger preachers in their preaching. He said, preacher, you gotta give him something to do, he would say. That has stayed with me as a younger preacher at that time. You gotta give him something to do. I love it. It's great advice because the question is, yeah, we believe. Now what do we do with that? Jesus gave us two things to do. [00:49:15] (32 seconds)  #giveSomeoneSomethingToDo

This is the embodiment of the Jesus world view. It's not complicated. You look around, you ask, you see, what what love is asking of you any particular day, and you go do it. It's just that simple. The Jesus worldview in action. It's not grandiose, probably not going to make the evening news by doing it. [00:55:34] (24 seconds)  #simpleJesusWay

We read it together. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and he added one. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. All 613, he boiled it down to these two. [00:47:14] (31 seconds)  #greatestCommandments

The gospel in a nutshell. Jesus never said, here, here's a tome with your systematic theology that I have penned for you. Jesus never said, you gotta feel the spirit. Jesus didn't say that. He said, love. [00:48:24] (23 seconds)  #gospelMadeSimple