Love Each Other

In the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, our Lord Jesus Christ not only tells us that we are to love God but He tells us exactly how we are to love Him: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." To complete this commandment He adds, "The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." There are not many of us who have a problem with the first part of this two-fold commandment. Those who acknowledge that there is a God will readily profess that they love Him. The only way it may be betrayed that we really do not love God is in our lack of ability to obey the second part of this command: loving our brother, neighbor, enemy as we love ourselves.

In the fourth chapter of John's first epistle, the Word explains emphatically to us that we cannot obey this command in part. We must obey it completely or we do not obey it at all. John proclaims, "If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And He has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother."

Often in our experience, we see people receive good fortune that we think should have more equitably come to us. Our friends, brothers, sisters, and our neighbors sometimes seem to receive blessings they do not deserve. The fact that they do not deserve them is the signal that the blessings are of God. The world rewards us with that which we have earned. Blessings from heaven are results of God's grace and not our merit. We receive them because of the boundless grace and mercy of God, not because of anything we have done to earn them.

Jesus does not suggest but He commands us to care about each other, to share in each other's joys and sorrows. When any of us hurts, all of us should feel it. When any of us receives good favor, all of us should celebrate it. Your good fortune must be a joy to me or I am not in the place where God commands me to be: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit - fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other." (John 15:9-17)

If, then, it is true that I cannot love God if I do not love you, and if loving you means rejoicing in your good fortune, when I am upset if you are blessed, when it bothers me that you receive favor that you do not deserve, when I can ignore your hurt and pain and begrudge you your pleasure and your joy, when I complain that you are receiving merit that should have more equitably come to me, do I really love God?