The Law Of Law

When Jesus was challenged to name the greatest commandment and thus sum up the moral teaching of the Old Testament Torah, He quickly answered His accusers, “Tho shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Matthew 22:37–39).

I read the sad story of a father in Waco, Texas. His son had been diagnosed as having cancer and needing life-saving treatment. The frantic father sold the family house, car and pickup truck to pay medical bills. When these were gone, a garage sale dispersed of everything else—even their clothes. When there was nothing left to sell, he borrowed all he could. But in the end, the boy died.

How much was that boy’s life worth to the father? It was obviously worth everything and anything. That’s how we love when disaster hits our own lives or the dear ones we love in our own families.

I like the force of James’s teaching on this subject in chapter 2, verses 15 and 16: “and if a brother or sister be naked, and want daily food: And one of you say to them: Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled; yet give them not those things that are necessary for the body, what shall it profit?”

James says God wants walkers, not just talkers.

In 1 John 3:16–18, the Bible says, “In this we have known the charity of God, because he hath laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. He that hath the substance of this world, and shall see his brother in need, and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the charity of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word, nor in tongue, but in truth.”

Caring is sharing. Loving is sharing. Giving is sharing. The whole purpose of the Church in this world can be summed up in that one word: sharing. That is what the agape love of the New Testament is really all about. It is what the Great Commission itself is all about.

But millions of Christians are still in spiritual kindergarten because we have been taught only to acquire and receive rather than practice true love by sharing.