The scribe said to him, "Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, He is One and there is no other than he. And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." And no one dared to ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34)
How do we love God? I suggest by flipping the script. We must love our neighbor first, and in that way we demonstrate our love of God. Here is an answer I’ve gleaned from the CS Lewis Institute:
(begin) What does it mean to love our neighbors? Again, we need to clarify our terms, this time, the word love. Because it is often used in contemporary English to denote sentiment, we can easily assume that “love” for a neighbor is encompasses warm and positive feelings. But this is an error that can actually hinder us from loving our neighbor. The fact is that we do not have such feelings toward everyone and cannot manufacture them at will. If loving our neighbor required this, we would be in a hopelessly impossible situation and tempted to give up our faith.
The good news is that our English word love stands in for the Greek word agape. And agape is not a word that denotes feeling or sentiment. Rather, it focuses on the will. So the fundamental nature of the command to love our neighbor is a matter of will, not feeling. Jesus was a realist who knew that we cannot command our feelings to be warm when they are cold or positive when they are negative. But we can exercise our will to act in another person’s best interest no matter how we happen to feel about that person.
This understanding underlies Jesus’ simple and practical instructions for loving others: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12). Have you ever wondered how to love someone as God commands? This is your answer. Consider the circumstances of the person before you and treat that person the way you would want to be treated if you were in that person’s shoes. To act in that person’s best interests, regardless of what you feel or don’t feel, is to love as Jesus intends. When we treat others in this way, what normally happens is that our feelings toward them begin to change and come increasingly in line with and support our will; that is, we begin to feel more loving toward them.
Loving others can be easy or hard. It may not be a great challenge to love a friend or family member if the sacrifice is not great. But loving one’s neighbor cannot be limited to what is easy or convenient. In the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus makes it clear that a neighbor is anyone in our path who needs our help, whether helping is easy or not, convenient, or not (Luke 10:29–37). Indeed, rendering such help can sometimes be dangerous and financially costly (10:34–35). (end)
Loving God the way Mark describes is desirable, but unlikely to be achieved by most of us. We are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.” This is a trinity of feelings. We are reminded to give it a try every time we cross ourselves by first touching our mind (forehead), our heart (chest), and then our soul (left to right across our shoulders as a way to mimic the soul within us). It’s the Father (mind), the Son (heart), and Holy Spirit (soul).
Deacon David Pierce
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