THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

Over the last week, people all over the world celebrated St Valentine’s day and there was a lot of “love” in the air.

For most people, it was another regular day either by choice of election or by situational circumstances but all in all, February 14 is a day that most people (females mostly J) look forward to with much gusto.

A passage of scripture occupied my heart for most of that week and formed the basis for my meditations for the period and I would like to share some portion of that passage with you.

Matthew 22:35-38 (NLT)

35One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: 36"Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?" 37Jesus replied, "'You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment.

For the sake of this write up, I will stop at 38.

Most of us are conversant with the “ten commandments” but is it not rather interesting that Jesus when asked which commandment was the greatest, responded with an answer that is not captured in what we all grew up to know as the ‘ten commandments of Moses’? an in-depth review of this will make a great topic for another day. But for today, let us stay on the subject matter; Love.

Love according to Jesus is a commandment. According to the Oxford dictionary, a commandment is a rule to be observed strictly. Meaning that going by Jesus’ words, we are under a strict mandate to love God with ALL our hearts, ALL our soul and ALL our mind.

Permit me to ask you to pause at this point and read Matthew 22:37 again but please do so in slow motion with a 3D view of yourself.

While you are digesting that passage, I would like you to ask yourself; do I love God with ALL my heart, ALL my soul and ALL my mind?

When you love someone or something, the thought of the person/thing consumes you. The thought of a loved one literally consumes you. You go to bed thinking about the person, wake up thinking about the person, you even see this person in your dreams and most times, spend a very good part of your day daydreaming about this person. Every person that has ever had a huge crush on someone would understand what I am saying. And this doesn’t come near to describing the expectations of the feeling of love.

How much of you has God consumed? Does He have ALL your heart, your soul and your mind or have you allocated just some part to Him? As a child of God, the commandment is to ensure that all of us is geared towards loving God. We must be lost in Him.

February 14 has come and gone, but the question that still lingers in my heart is this; based on my evaluation of myself, can I really say that I have loved the Lord my God with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind? Everything I am doing currently, every thought in my heart, every action that I have taken and will take, are they all geared towards expressing my love for my Father? Can I truly say that I have strictly observed the rule to love my Lord my God?

I have spent some time answering these questions for myself but I want to pose the same questions to you; have you really obeyed the first commandment?

Selah!