This year, one of my resolutions was to try, once again, to read through the Bible in a year. I’ve chosen the M’Cheyne One Year Reading Plan and am tracking progress using YouVersion.com‘s awesome (albeit buggy) tools. I chose this plan for several reasons including the fact that it does include every word (some plans skip over genealogy texts, etc) and was developed by Good News Publishers and Crossway, who publish my new favorite Bible translation, the English Standard Version. This portion of my attempt at daily posts will likely spawn from this reading plan and, unless otherwise noted, all texts will be from the ESV translation. Let’s begin.
28And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, Which commandment is the most important of all? 29Jesus answered, The most important is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 31The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.
A week or so ago, I posted the video below to Twitter and Facebook. DC Curry, from Granger Community Church, brings the heat with a goosebump-inducing analysis of the most well-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16. As he so eloquently states, it ALL boils down to love. For God LOVED!
And so, in the same way, the single greatest commandments also boil down to love. Love God. Love others. It’s as simple as that. Nothing else pleases God more, or is more important than, love. Of course, we all have different definitions of love (as does the Bible), but we’ll review those some other time.
For now, simply ask yourself. Are you putting anything else in front of loving God? After Him, loving others? I am. I love myself. I love money. I love gadgets and toys. It is my prayer that together, we can learn to love in the order we’ve been commanded.