A simple,
yet haunting, question has been on mind for several years now. As I have sought to mature in my faith, my
spirituality, and my commitment to being a follower of Jesus Christ, I have
come face to face with His words “Follow me.” I recall on an early morning three years ago hearing Jesus whisper to
me. I was brushing my teeth, minding my
own business when he said these words: “Eric, follow me.” Since then, I have spent a fair amount of
time attempting to answer that call, as well as pondering what it means and
what it looks like. Because I like to
write, the following made it to paper (and a whole lot more actually).

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the
Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 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.’ All
the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.

1. I want to
begin my contemplation of what it means to follow Jesus by looking at this
passage of Scripture taken from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 22:34-40. In this scripture Christ shows what he holds
as the two most important commands that exist for those who would follow
him. Love God with all your heart, soul
and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. In other words: Love God with all
of your being, and love others. The Way
hinges on these two commands, that is what Jesus says. Two commands! Simple! If I do these two things I am following the
Way. Yet these two seemingly simple
commands must be contemplated, pondered thoughtfully, for while they are simple
there is a deeper understanding to be sought (I think). Jesus said that if we
love him we will keep his commands (John 14:15,21). Evidence then that one loves God is that one
follows these two commands. So I feel
that I need to clearly understand them and must ask: Do I?

2. What does it
mean then to love God with all your heart, soul and mind? This is a call to love God on every level of
one’s consciousness, on every level of one’s being. If the heart is the spirit,
then how do I love God with my
spirit? The spiritual Self is difficult
to define. It is that part of myself
which lies at the core of my being. It
is the innermost and most real part of my identity and existence, it is that
part which exists forever more and communes most intimately with God who is
Spirit himself. It is this point of
communion that captures my imagination. My spirit is that part of my being which engages with God in
relationship, it is the point of contact. When Jesus tells us to love God with all of our heart, he is asking us
to enter into a relationship with God. Now this opens up a whole host of problems, for it is in our hearts that
we also must deal with the reality of our fallen Self and our sin. To love God with all of our heart means that something needs to be done
about that which is in our spirits, which blocks us from being able to love him
with all of our heart. It is this
challenge that is presented to the person who would seek to know and love
God. This call to commit the very centre
of our being to relationship is at the core of keeping the first command. Thus the Way that we are to follow is to
respond to this command and enter into the relationship that God desires to
have with us. I would suggest that the
command is profoundly relational in character.

3. Let us
consider the soul and the mind the other two realms of our being that Jesus
tells us we are to love God with. Can we
separate the soul and the mind from the heart (spirit)? Or are they not a part
of the heart, but words that we can use to describe the functions of the
spirit? My goal here is not to discuss
the metaphysical nature of man so I will simply say that I view the heart, soul
and mind as all part of the human spirit. The soul and the mind contribute to the goal of the heart, which is to
love God. Thus to love God with all of
our soul means that the activities and state of the soul are to be such that
they move us towards deeper love and relationship with God. It is often thought that our emotions are a
part of the soul’s activity. So let us
use the example of an emotion to try and deepen our understanding. We are feeling beings who experience a vast
range of emotions: anger, anxiety, happiness, excitement etc… we view them as
being negative and positive states. If our emotions, or emotional
state is such that it hinders us from being able to love God with our soul (and
mind and heart) then we are not following the command. But let us not lose heart! If the basis of the command is relational, as
I have suggested, then there is hope to live with our emotions and obey the
command. Let us now look at an
example: If I am bound up by anxious
feelings regarding the future (as I often am) this reveals a lack of trust on
my part of God’s sovereignty over my life and a breakdown of relationship is
shown to exist, for if I love him I will trust him. But as I said above let us not lose
hope! Anxiety itself is not wrong (nor
is any emotion for that matter) it is my response that matters. God knows that we will face anxiety and in
his love for us tells us to not only share our worries with him but also to
cast them upon him (1 Pet.5:7; see also Matthew chapter 6). He will care for us and help us overcome our
anxiety. He offers a solution based in
relationship, and our response is based on our relationship with him. I use this example to try and show a possible
way in which the soul contributes to the goal of the heart, which is a love
relationship with God.

The same is
true of loving God with all of our mind. To love God with all of our mind would seem to mean that our thoughts
and ways of thinking contribute to furthering our relationship with God. If our ways of thinking and the activities of our mind prevent or hinder
us from loving God then we are not following the command he has given us. The
ways in which we think about him, others and the world around us need to be
such that they move us towards loving him more and deepening our relationship
with him. One of the challenges we face
here is that we tend to limit our relationship with God to our intellectual
understanding of who he is and his ways. But knowledge of him is not enough. Our knowledge must become more than mere understanding and contribute to
our relationship with him. At this point
I am on the borders of what some call mysticism or spiritual thinking, but I
must resist entering that discussion and save it for another time.

4. The first
command then is to love God and this love is expressed within the context of a
relationship with him that takes place on every level of our being. It is important to realize that this
relationship is made possible by Christ himself, for how could I enter into
such an intimate relationship with God if not for the redemptive work of his
son? It is Christ through his death and
resurrection that has made this first command one that we can actually fulfill
and follow.

5. If the first
command rests on a relational foundation so then does the second command: Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus even tells us that this command is like
the first. So let us ask the
question: What does it mean to love your
neighbor as yourself? First I must
define who I understand my neighbor to be. In my thinking the neighbor is anyone I come into relational contact
with, whether it be for five minutes or a lifetime.

6. The command
here is to love people; love others. The
word “love” is one of those words that means so much to different people. It is simple and dynamically complex. Christ said that there was no greater act of
love than that of laying down one’s life for another (John 15:13),
foreshadowing his own act of love in laying down his life for humanity on the
cross. The greatest act of love that we
can offer then is to lay down our lives for others. This is a striking statement for it causes us
to realize that to love others is to put them ahead of ourselves in every
way. We set aside our own desires and
purposes for the sake of others, we become selfless and set aside
selfishness. To love our neighbor is to
be willing to put their needs ahead of ours. We become less self centered and become focused on others.

7. There is a
moral standard set in motion by this command which is fairly obvious: don’t steal from others, don’t cheat them,
don’t harm them etc… There is a common
sense to it. But love is much more than
a moral set of rules. Love is about
relationship, unbroken and whole relationship. This whole and healthy relational reality is made possible through
Christ. Through him we can enter into a
whole and unbroken relationship with the living God. Our relationship with him is the model upon
which our relationship with others is to be based. Out of the love that flows in our
relationship with God flows the love that we have for people. If this is true, then there is a spiritual
dynamic that is at work. I would suggest
that our capacity to love others is directly connected to the level of intimacy
that we have with God. The more we come
to love God, the greater our capacity to love others will become. It is now possible to say then that the first
command is about cultivating a relationship with God and the second command is
about cultivating relationship with others, a cultivation made possible by
pursuing the first command (here again I am speaking of whole, unbroken and
healthy relationship, a depth of relational reality made possible through
Christ).

8. There is another dimension in the second command
which I find striking: Love your neighbor as
yourself. To love another as you
love yourself presents us with an intriguing idea. It would seem to suggest that to the degree
which I love myself I am able to love my neighbor. Is there a spiritual economy to be considered
here? If I despise myself will I despise
others? If I do not accept myself will I be unable to
accept others? If this is true it means
that if we want to fulfill the command to love others we must come to a place
wherein we love and accept ourselves so that the depth of love that we have for
others can be significant. Here then we
realize the importance of Christ’s transforming work in our spirit. It is through him that we become able to love
and accept ourselves because of his redemptive work. Before he embraced us and began his work of
transformation within us we lived under the oppression of shame and guilt
brought about by our sin nature. I am
speaking here now about a spiritual reality. In our spirits we were limited in our ability to love ourselves because
our spirits were aware of their fallen states. But through Christ’s redemption sin is overcome and forgiven, and we are
becoming a new creation within. Because
of the healing of our natures that he is effecting within our spirits we are
becoming able to love and accept ourselves. Therefore, our love for people will increase and become more significant
as we come to increasingly love and accept ourselves. Even in this dimension then we see the
importance of relationship on a certain level. How we relate to our Selves is vital to our ability to fulfill this
second command.

To love
others is not easy. To love others as
ourselves is even more difficult. In an
era where the Self is at the centre of most people’s lives, we find that Jesus
is still just as much a radical now as he was during his life. I have found that the first command comes
easily to me. I love God very much. The second command is where true effort has
been and is required on my part. I am a
solitary person who enjoys being alone. I used to use this characteristic as an excuse to isolate myself from
people in general, but the truth was that I did not want to love others. I share this because I can now say that
change is possible, that headway along the road of this command can be made. Today I have a love for others that I would
not have thought possible before. This
change of heart came not through any dramatic spiritual experience other than
Jesus reminding me consistently that if I truly loved him, then I would love the people around me to. Graciously, he has walked along side me in
this and has softened my heart. It has
taken time and some conscious effort on my part, but the change is
happening. As followers of Jesus this
ability to love people genuinely is perhaps the greatest key to sharing the
truth of the Good News in 2007. Look
around you, and you will not have to look very far or hard, and you will see
people simply in need of someone who will love and accept them.

EHJ