Four Kinds of Love

Some things claim to be "best" or are labeled "greatest": the Great Lakes; the Grand Canyon; the Great Wall of China; the Grand Tetons; Grand Ole Opry, Pontiac Grand Am; Best Buy...Super One.

If something or someone is called the "greatest," we pay attention. Whether it's the World Series or the Super Bowl or the Mother of the Year, it's in the news. People are attracted to the best of anything.

The Guinness Book of World Records has many entries that are ridiculous—who has hopped the most number of times on one foot. Who cares? But once we get past those crazy stunts, we are fascinated by the best of anything. We enjoy seeing excellence.

If you're a basketball fan, you know that Michael Jordan was inducted Friday into the NBA Hall of Fame. A 31.6 ppg career scoring average, 6 NBA championship titles, 5 MVPs, 6 Finals MVPs and an NCAA national championship. We enjoy seeing greatness.

If a friend whispered in your ear, "Hey! I've got a really hot tip!" you'd perk up and listen, wouldn't you? It could be anything: maybe news on a great investment—some new tech stock to watch; maybe it's a tip on getting mustard stains out of a white shirt. Whatever. If it's a great idea, you'd perk up your ears.

If you heard about the "best bargain" or the "greatest deal" or the "biggest sale" or the "best Walleye lake in the state," you'd take notice. You would want to find out more. Such things get our attention.

By now you're probably sitting there thinking, So what's your point, Rich? What's this got to do with anything? Well, I want to tell you about the greatest commandment of all time. Of all the great, super, fantastic, record-holding things to pay attention to, at the top of our list should be the thing that pleases God most, don't you think?

One day someone asked Jesus if he could condense all the religious teaching and spiritual thought into one compact statement. Out of all God's commandments and religious instructions, he asked—out of all the Scriptures and laws—which one is the greatest? The most important? Foundational?

³⁴ Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" ³⁷ Jesus replied: "‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matt 22:34-40, NIV)

²⁹ "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' ³¹ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31, NIV)

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deut 6:4-5, NIV)

Over the next few weeks, I'd like us to consider what this means to us. How should this greatest commandment impact our lives? What difference should an ancient religious teaching make to us in the 21^st century?

Over the next few weeks, we're going to consider the four kinds of love that Jesus says we need to use—that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

As we go into this, however, it's important to realize that

1. Our lives are defined by who or what we love.

Most of you have hobbies or interests or activities that you really enjoy. You might even call them things you "love." Fishing...photography...cars...football...music...kayaking...skiing...shopping...coffee...

But as much as we may have an interest in certain things, Jesus says our love should ultimately be reserved for only two areas—God and people. So we're going to look at what it means if our lives become defined by a love for God and a love for others—and away from things or activities.

I want to begin by providing some context for this whole discussion on loving God, looking at the Jewish culture and their traditions of religious debate. It's unlikely that the one who asked Jesus the question expected a clear, straight-forward answer. He was probably expecting a vigorous, extended, knock-down verbal battle. He probably didn't think there could be one simple answer to such a complex question.

You see, the Jews loved their debates. Their learned scholars and theologians divided into schools of thought and competed to see who would win and who would have the most influence. They would spend hours wrangling over small details—getting caught up in minutia and missing the main point.

Jesus warned the religious legal scholars that they could miss the most important lessons while they put all their energies into trivial matters. He said they worked hard to "strain out a gnat" from their soup but would swallow a whole camel without batting an eye (Matt 23:24). They seemed obsessed with small details (like giving a tenth of their spices) but they completely neglected "more important matters" like "justice, mercy, and faithfulness" (Matt 23:23).

A lot of people "major in minors"—and love is lost in the process.

2. Love won't confuse gnats and camels.

The Jewish religious leaders were constantly trying to drag Jesus into a debate. They wanted to win an argument so they could prove that he wasn't such a great teacher after all. Sometimes they even joined forces with their own rivals to gang up on him—as we see earlier in this same chapter:

¹⁵ Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. ¹⁶ They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "...¹⁷ ...what is your opinion?" (Matt 22:15-17)

That same day the Sadducees...came to him with a question. (Matt 22:23)

Three groups—Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees—all were trying to defeat Jesus in a war of words. But they couldn't trap him! In fact, every time they thought they had him cornered with some religious conundrum, he seemed to turn the tables on them. They kept losing at their own game.

So this was the scene when Jesus was asked the big question.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. (Matt 22:34)

The Sadducees had nothing more to say. They couldn't stump him. They were left speechless—the word silenced could be translated gagged or muzzled. His answer left them unable to talk back. So the Pharisees schemed together to take another crack at it—to see if they could do better than their rivals, the Sadducees.

They wanted to put Jesus to the test (v 35)—to break him under the sheer weight of their difficult questions. They wanted to discredit him in the eyes of the people—not just so he would look bad, but so they could look good.

The Pharisees discussed among themselves what they might do. Their reasoning probably went along these lines: What's a question that cannot possibly be answered? What's a question that will make this guy stammer around and look like an idiot? So they threw out various suggestions and ideas. I imagine then someone remembering a religious debate they had struggled with—a question they had never been able to resolve: What is the greatest commandment in the Law?

Now, from their perspective, this was really an impossible question. There were literally hundreds of commandments and instructions in the Law and the Prophets—what we now call the Old Testament. And they were categorized into topics and sub-topics: religious laws, ceremonial laws, moral laws, ethical laws, civil laws, dietary laws, and so on.

According to the Talmud (the record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history, a central text of mainstream Judaism) there are 613 mitzvot ("commandments") in the Torah (first five books in the Bible, the books of the Law, the books of Moses)—248 positive mitzvot and 365 negative mitzvoth.

On top of that were the thousands of interpretations and extrapolations given by hundreds of famous teachers of the Law. Many of those interpretations became viewed as legal requirements.

That's a lot of laws! When it came to laws, the ancient Jews were almost as bad as Congress!

For instance, it wasn't enough for them to say, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do all your work in six days, but you shall not do any work on the seventh."

No, they had to itemize all the things you could and couldn't do on the Sabbath. You could, for instance, walk a little distance on the Sabbath, but not too far—or you would cross the line from leisure to work. (Acts 1:12 refers to a "Sabbath day's journey"—meaning the distance the teachers of the Law said you could not exceed, which was 2,000 cubits or 3,000 feet.)

So out of hundreds and hundreds of commandments, there were bound to be differences of opinion. Surely, the Pharisees thought, no matter what Jesus says, somebody will have a come back. This question will spark a lot of debate—and Jesus will be discredited in the eyes of all his followers.

So they challenged Jesus: "What is the greatest commandment in the Law? Out of all the instructions our learned scholars have given us, which is most important?"

Jesus, however, didn't respond the way they expected him to! Instead of sifting through 613 mitzvots, he turned the conversation from Law to Love.

3. If you get LOVE right, he said, you'll get the entire Law right.

All the commands of Scripture have, at their core, the concept of love. Everything Moses and all the prophets said can be distilled down to a single word: LOVE.

Augustine of Hippo, an early church leader (4^th and 5^th century), said, "Love God and do as you please." On the face of it, that statement might sound reckless and irresponsible. But if we analyze it more carefully, we see that a person who is motivated solely by love for God will instinctively do loving things for God. His actions will not need to be restricted or confined—as a fence or a leash might do for a dog, holding him back from doing bad things. Love will influence his actions!

Imagine chaining a wild animal in your back yard. Say you have a tiger in a cage. It doesn't matter how well-fed that tiger might be or how loudly he purrs, I wouldn't recommend turning him loose to go where he wants or to do what he wants! You might think you have your tiger trained and under control. But at the core, the tiger is still a wild animal, and you never know when he's going to act on his wild impulses. Remember Siegfried and Roy's white tiger?

The Law confines us, but it doesn't change us. The Law puts limits on our actions, but it doesn't affect the inner motivation for our actions—not one little bit. Without the leash of the Law to hold us back, you never know when our wild impulses will take over.

Love, on the other hand, transforms us from the inside out. Love gives us the desire to be close to the one we love. When we love, we don't wander away. Even without a leash or a fence, love causes us to stay close.

Our dog is not a wild dog—far from it. However, our dog is not a perfect dog either—he has a lot of idiosyncrasies. He can be a weird little dog, at times.
But despite all this, our dog loves us and because he loves us, he can't stand to be separated from us. If we put him outside for a little fresh air and to take care of his business, he's not going to run off or run wild. In fact, he's not satisfied to stay outside. In less than two minutes he's back at the door, barking to be let back in. He wants to be with us, right next to us, as close as he can be.
He follows Sharon around from room to room. If she's working at the counter and turns to stir a pot on the stove, he's right in the way. He wants to be under her feet and in the way. If you ever hear that Sharon had to go to the hospital with a broken hip or arm or something, it may be just because our dog loved her too much.

My point is this: wild dogs run wild. You can't control them without a chain or a cage. But a loving dog wants to hang around. Love changes the relationship—so no chains or cages are needed. If we are constrained by the Law, we might be prevented from doing wrong. But love influences us without chains or cages.

"If you love me," Jesus said in the Gospel of John, "you will obey what I command." (14:15). Not because he forces you to obey, but because you want to!

"Love God and do as you please," Augustine said. Because if you love God, your heart will be changed so that you will want to do the things that please and honor the One you love. Love God, and you will essentially do the things in the Law. Love is the central component and primary motivation for all the commandments and rules of Scripture.

But Jesus wasn't through with their question. Next, he took the greatest commandment one step further by linking it to the second most important commandment—to love your neighbor as yourself. When you love your neighbor,

4. Your actions toward your neighbor will demonstrate your love for God.

Caring for people mirrors the heart of God. Matt 25:31-46: "I was hungry...thirsty...a stranger...needing clothes...sick..." When? "The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'" (Matt 25:40)

Love God and love your neighbor, Jesus said.

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matt 22:40)

This was a Jewish expression—to hang something up. Imagine a peg that you hang your hat and coat on. Any ordinary peg will do. But now imagine a peg on which you're going to hang all the clothes in your closet. You're going to need a really strong, sturdy peg—one big enough so it won't break under the weight.
Jesus was saying not only is this the most important thing, he was saying that if we don't get this right, then nothing else really matters.

Paul echoed those thoughts later in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. I can have all sorts of things—tongues, prophetic gifts, knowledge—and I can do all sorts of things—give away everything I own and even die for my faith. But if I don't have love, none of that matters!

One last thing about the greatest commandment: Love for God requires our ALL—not a majority of our heart; not most of our heart; not even 99%. Love for God requires 100%—ALL.

5. Love for God must be total—or it's nothing. With ALL your heart...ALL your soul...

True love cannot be haphazard, cavalier, or luke-warm. Half-hearted love is not love at all. We can't hold anything back if we want to truly love. Love is about sacrifice, complete surrender, total commitment.

Let me ask: How do you love the Lord? How is your relationship with him? Are other interest or other things crowding him out? Do you love the Lord with ALL you are and ALL you have? What are some of the areas in your life or interests that compete with your love and dedication for God?

Pray to be stretched...challenged...convicted—so our love for God will become deeper and stronger.