“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ (Matthew 22:34-40) Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees’ question simultaneously simplifies and complicates how people of faith are called to live. Things are simplified in that we need not become overly scrupulous about our behavior. On the other hand, things are complicated in that now all we have to do is love God and our neighbor completely. I don’t know about you, but let’s just say regarding me, I’m working on that! I’m certainly not there yet in keeping the greatest commandment. But when I contemplate my own desperate need for grace, I take great comfort in what John Wesley said regarding the keeping of the commandment: “But we see a promise of God to give us that love, and to make us humble, meek and holy…We may yet further observe that every command in Holy Writ is only a covered promise.” How does it change our discipleship, our response to the Good News to hear every command from our Savior as a promise of what he will do in and through us as we yield to him? Our efforts are never sufficient to themselves, but they really are never by themselves, are they? Law is always Gospel with Jesus.
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