With all Your Heart, Soul, and Mind

Mt. 22:37-40

And 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 great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Once again the Pharisees are trying to test Jesus by asking Him a question about the greatest commandment. How many times are they going to keep trying to entrap Jesus? You would think after so many failed attempts that they would realize who He was! Jesus answered by quoting from Deut. 6:5, the command that the Jews repeated twice daily. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, with man's complete totality, with everything that man has. This great love for God embodies all the other commands and is the basic motivation for obedience. Likewise, this love enables man to love not only God but his neighbor.

In John 13 Jesus expands this same command into His new commandment. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples. What is the difference? How is this command to love new? Now because of Jesus, because of His indwelling me in the person of the Spirit, I am  now empowered to love others and God. It is no longer me, but Him living and working in me. This same love that brought Him to earth to close the gap between God and man by taking on Himself the sin of the world is the love that fills and empowers me. Not only that but His love in me is now my mark of identification. It is how I am known and perceived. According to the riches of His grace, He grants me to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in my inner being, so that Christ may dwell in my heart through faith--that I, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that I may be filled with the fullness of God. This is the outworking of the new commandment!! His love in me!! But how? How am I to comprehend such a love? How I am to know such a love? How am I to be filled with this fullness? It is all according to the riches of His grace. He grants it to me! He strengthens me with power through His Spirit!! I must surrender and desire!!

Father,
Give me such a love for You and for others. Help me to known by Your great love for me. Fill me with all the fullness of God so that I might bring glory to Your name.
In His name,
Amen