The Big Two
Did you know, in the Old Testament there were 613 rules, God’s people had to obey?
These covered clothes, food, hygiene, worship, house upkeep and matters of social justice. Everything revolved around God and the 613 rules He had them do.
This wasn’t to be mean or a test, it was the system God gave, so that His people could be close to Him. Before Jesus, sins were not removed from people, but rather they were covered. This meant they could worship God by doing these rules, but this stopped short of what God wanted.
Moses, God’s first Pastor, did his best to lead the people into His presence and to obey these 613 rules. As we can imagine, this was a daunting task and one that wasn’t completed.
Then Jesus comes, and changes everything! Or we can say, He fulfills everything!
Jesus flipped the script because He was the script. He fulfilled the law because He was the Messiah, the Son of God.
This means, all of the 613 rules Jesus fulfilled and for the first time, it was completed. Only Jesus could have done this and it’s through His death, burial and resurrection that this was done.
So for us now, we don’t have 613 rules, we have two commands that empower us to fulfill all of God’s word.
“36. Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” 37. Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38. This is the first and greatest commandment. 39. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:36-40
Notice in our verses, that Jesus sums up everything by saying, love God and love people.
This is it! The big two, love God and love people.
When we do this, we’re doing the will of God. However, this is our daily challenge because things compete with our passion for God and things come up with others too.
But this is the genius of Jesus, in that He sums up serving Him with these two things, making it so much easier than trying to do 613 rules.
Aren’t you glad for Jesus?
Our challenge is to love God and love people daily, and not get sidetracked into the 613 rules. Our aim is to know Jesus and furthermore, to show Jesus to others.
When we stoop down into the Quagmire of rules and rudiments, we can know the Bible and not know Jesus. We can emphasize rules and not know His heart. We can read what He’s saying and not get what He’s saying.
God created us to know Him. He created us to reflect Him and to do His will by loving God and loving people.
These are the big two!
When we do this, God things happen. When we do this, Jesus is seen. When we do this, we’re better. When we do this, we glorify God and when we do this, we are doing His will.
So, today, in this moment, how are you doing with loving God and loving people? No matter the answer, we can do this in Jesus.
“For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.”
Philippians 4:13
This is our daily metric and I pray that all of us stay focused, keep it simple and do the big two.
We can make a difference!
Love God and Love People,
PD
