Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Matthew 22:37-39

In Christ’s time, the Hebrew people had 10 Commandments and over 600 statutes to live by. With so many rules to remember, I imagine their relationships with God and with each other were very legalistic. When asked which commandments were most important, Jesus summarized them all into two very compact yet critical commandments: Love God. Love others.

I once did a Bible study that asked us to consider how Jesus could make a command that we love others.

After all, isn’t love an emotion?

Can anyone, even God, tell us how we should feel?

What about loving our enemies?

How is that possible when we have so many complicated feelings of hurt and anger?

Many times I’m not even sure what emotion exactly I’m experiencing. I imagine the same thing happens to you from time to time.

How then can Christ not only expect us to love others, but actually command us to do so?

Dear Heart, Jesus commands us to love others because He knows that love is more than a feeling; love is a purpose-filled decision to put others first in a compassionate and righteous way.

Before we chose Christ as our Savior and dedicated ourselves to living as He lived, we were as enemies to God because of our sin (Romans 5:10). BUT God, God loves us so much that despite how frustrated it must be for Him when we refuse to believe in or obey Him, He still sent Christ to be a living sacrifice for our sins so that we can have a way to be reconciled with Him (Romans 5:8).

Praises be to God for His loving grace and mercy because I need them every day!

God defines love as being both compassionate and righteous (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). One without the other is not love.

Compassion is an emotional outpouring toward others and can be as weightless as saying, “Oh how sad” and moving on.

Righteousness is having a standard of living defined by God that keeps us right with Him (1 Timothy 6:11).

The Pharisees were very big on standards – so much so that their legalistic ways are seen clearly in the anecdote of the adulterous woman brought before Christ. A woman that they were fully prepared to stone, but that Christ set free with a command to go and sin no more.

Compassion without righteousness (standards of living set by God) can lead to inaction or the wrong action like validating someone’s sin out of an emotional draw to not see them any more upset than they already are.

Righteousness without compassion is cruel and rigid and lacks the mercy and grace which are at the very center of God’s love for us (Ephesians 2:8). God tells us that love has to be both compassionate and righteous: putting others first out of a desire to see only good things come to them and through them and helping them remain right with the Lord by avoiding sin.

When we love one another as God defines love, we override the butterflies in the stomach variety of love which is fleeting and fickle and reach our full potential for love. We choose to put others first and pour our time and talents and treasure into them. We seek truth and with compassion share it with others so that they too can grow closer to God.

Beloved, love is more than a word or a feeling. Love is a purposeful decision to compassionately do what is right for others at all times no matter how we feel. Be who God made you to be. Be love.

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