The Two Great Commandments explained! First, God's Law is love. Second, the 2 Great Commandments sum up the Torah. Are we supposed to follow God's Law? Has the Law been nailed to the cross? See the truth of God's Law clearly presented. Know what God's will is for you.
So, continuing on from last week’s post (LINK) the law of god is really quite simple. God's law is simply the revealed will of God and the clear definition of his perfect righteousness. That's basically what it is. It's pretty simple. What a gift we have been given to know with certainty, exactly what it is he wills for us. This has been the most profound question ever asked. People have been wanting to know this their whole lives, you know. “If I could only know what the will of god is for me, then I would just do it!” Well, we can know exactly what he wills for us if we simply read it, and it's not even that hard. The father has made his instructions very very easy for us to understand.
Like we pointed out before how messiah said that unless we become like little children, we will in no wise inherit the kingdom of heaven. The law is not too hard for us to comprehend. It's not above our heads. You don't have to be smart at all. You certainly don't need a degree in theology to get this. God structured this in a way so that even when the most ignorant farmers who came every seven years to hear the instructions read aloud at the local synagogue, that they would understand it. If you have been confused before, that's because someone has confused you. It’s not because it's above your head. It's not above your head at all.
Now the adversary, whose middle name is confusion, has hijacked many of the positions of authority in the christian world and has made it his job to convince you that the will of God is way too hard for you to understand. God’s will is so hard that you need to run to the local hireling or wolf in sheep's clothing so that they can explain it to you. Now please, don't fall for that one anymore! God's will is perfectly clear and a first grader has a better chance of comprehending it when he reads it than to someone who just graduated from a completely confused seminary.
If you really desire to know the will of God this will make sense to you in just a minute. But, first before we seek truth, we need to pray and ask God that he removes any bias we may have in our hearts or for any concept that we may hold already. We're not seeking to confirm our bias, but to discover the real truth. We we need to ask him to cure us of our pride. Whatever it is we think we already have figured out, we need to stop and ask him to open our hearts to be open to his will, which, he has written for us. If you really truly seek righteousness His word is where it lies.
We don't want to invest our lives in the word of pastors or theologians who can make mistakes we want the pure word as our guide to keep us straight.
Now we're about to read god's written will so we need to be open to it. As we go through this, I pray that the father will open our hearts to what he is communicating here and that anything that may not be of him will be erased from our minds forever. We just want the truth
We need to remember as we go through this that these instructions of righteousness are a gift of true love. Love is the one thing I think that we can all agree is worth our getting to know better. True love, not the love we have for lollipops and corvettes and all that junk but true love. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, it doesn't insist on its own way, it's not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but it rejoices in the truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things love never ends.
Some folks see only prophecies. That's all they want to get to know. But, prophecies will all come to an end. Some church people focus on just speaking in tongues. But, tongues will cease. Speaking for myself, I waste a lot of time thinking and pursuing great knowledge but, that's not where the life really is. But faith hope and love they abide and the greatest of these is love. So, as we go through and read these things, please know that love is the fulfillment of the law.
So, the full complete detailed set of instructions we have been given the law in a set of five books. These five books give the complete context and background of who God is, what he has done for us, and exactly what he requires of us if we are to walk in righteousness. Now, if we read these requirements, we'll quickly find out that we don't really match up. But, as we'll see a little later within these same instructions, He has already provided the solution to this problem.
Now these five books are the first five books of the bible called the Torah or the instructions. Later, you'll see how the books of the prophets are built upon these first instructions and they also prophesied, how one day the requirements given in these instructions would be fulfilled in coming Messiah. Later, in what is called the New Testament, we're given an example of how to live and carry out these instructions as shown by the walking word of god, the messiah himself. We also see how He fulfilled the requirements needed to pay our debts for the many shortcomings that we have in not living up to the law as we should. The last book of the bible shows how all the rest of the law will be fulfilled at the end when messiah sets everything straight and creates a perfect new heavens and new earth, better than Eden for all those who will choose to respond to his love and follow him to the end.
That's a lot of reading I know, but thankfully God has made the path easy for us to start on.
Messiah sums it up the best in his little discourse with Joseph of Arimathea taken from the movie Jesus of Nazareth. The dialog is in English so please forgive and ignore the foreign subtitles.
Jesus: “What is the heart of the law?
Joseph: Hear o Israel thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart with all thy soul with all thy strength. This is the greatest commandment.
Jesus: You said well. You are not far from the kingdom of god Joseph of Arimathea, but there is another commandment no less great, You must love your neighbor as yourself!”
But that leaves the question: “who is my neighbor?”
This is the heart of the whole book. That's the foundation of what god wills for us. All the rest of the commandments, examples and statutes are detailing what these two great commandments entail. These two things should make up the core of our very being. For if we follow all the instructions in the whole scripture, we take the entire torah to heart, all the 613 Mitzvot and of course the big ten commandments, will truly love God with all our heart soul and strength and we will truly love our brothers as we love ourselves.
Now we, with our twisted little imaginations can attempt to fill in all these little blanks ourselves. And we can make up our own nice little theologies that serve our filthy lustful desires. Unfortunately, that will lead us to misery in the end. You see, our father, being the creator of the universe, and of us, knows exactly how we really tick. Ever since we chose to wreck our perfect world by rebelling against him back in the garden. We need to have all the details of what constitutes righteousness given to us so we can live the full love failed purposeful lives that we are created for. The more we have chosen to live without these instructions, the more we have made the world a nasty place. If we would all choose to follow the details of how to live these two great commandments you wouldn't need locks on your doors. We wouldn’t need teen crisis centers. We wouldn’t need huge militaries with strategic air commands. We wouldn’t need huge police departments to enforce the laws or need 12 gauge assault shotguns for self defense.
Unfortunately, most of us have chosen to live outside God’s loving instructions and so we do need our 12 gauge assault shotguns! I mean the world is a nasty place out there. So, to clarify exactly what he meant by these two great commandments he gave us more detail in what we know as the ten commandments. The first four of the ten commandments tell us what it means to love god with all your heart mind and strength. The last six of the first ten commandments tell us what it really means to love our brother as we love ourselves.
Now if we want even more detail or if we're not satisfied with any of those and we still want to get more detail, we have the 613 Mitzvot, which, really fill in the blanks for us. Want to know more about the love and brotherhood section than what's in the big ten, well then, we can read God's will in even greater detail. For example, the Mitzvot teach us not to stand by idly when human life is in danger or not to bear a grudge and not to leave a beast that has fallen down beneath its burden unaided.
The ten commandments are just the beginning. There are actually 613 commandments detailing god's loving will in matters of righteousness including categories like marriage, divorce and family. There are commands about what NOT to “make love” with, what foods are safe for you to eat and what will make you sick. There are even commands about how to properly throw a party and celebrate the accomplishments of the Lord. There are commands pertaining to property rights, criminal laws, righteous punishment and restitution, how to take care of critters in a loving way. In all manner of things, we would do well to know now God’s commands. If we still have a hard time understanding any of these 613, we have the full context in the rest of the scriptures detailing the full ramifications of these instructions. Any question we could possibly have dealing with what would God have us do is answered in his word. So, let's go through the foundational ten commandments and get just a small taste of the loving character of our father in heaven.
But before we do, here’s a little something I think we all need to consider! Now you may think you have heard them already but, I bet most of you have never heard, let alone read, the actual ten commandments. Why? Most of our churches have erased over half of what was actually commanded so that they could continue in their spiritual adultery without being challenged. Some have removed entire commandments like the second commandment and then shuffled the numbers around and split some commandments up so that they can still add up to the number 10. In the next installment, let's read the actual ten commandments straight from the original source so that no one can pull the wool over our eyes again.