Could You Sum Up Your Faith in One Sentence?
Imagine standing in a parking lot and a stranger asks you to sum up the Christian life in a single sentence. Could you do it? The religious experts of Jesus’ day had turned faith into a maze of 613 commandments, 248 things to do and 365 things to avoid, endlessly debating which ones mattered most. When a lawyer tried to trap Jesus with that very question, he didn’t complicate it further. He simplified it.
As I opened Matthew 22, verses 34 through 40, I wanted us to sit with the answer Jesus gave: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. This is our CBC motto, but as I told our church family, “I don’t want this just to be our motto. I want it to be our commitment in following the Lord.” On these two commandments, Jesus said, depend all the law and the prophets. That’s the whole of it. That’s the one sentence.
Love God With Everything That We Are
The first thing that struck me as I looked at the text was how many times the word “all” appears. He’s not looking for a portion of your love. He’s not looking for a portion of our sacrifice. He’s not looking for a portion of our commitment. He’s saying, “I want it all.” That takes us back to the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, the daily confession of Israel, and it takes us straight to our own hearts this morning.
I believe loving God with all your heart starts before you ever walk through our doors. “I believe that loving God with all your heart starts before you walk through the doors of Community Baptist Church. I think it even begins before last night when you think about coming today.” That means worship is something we prepare for, not something we stumble into. I told our people plainly: come with your heart prepared, love Him with your mind by hearing and obeying His Word, sing praises to Him, and honor Him with your strength and your possessions. I shared how I came from a legalistic background, not because of any church but because of my own heart, and how God’s grace over nineteen years has taught me what really matters. I also had to be honest about something I’ve watched happen in churches: “I’ve seen people work to get away from worship… they find their value in what they do instead of who they are.” We are worshipers first. Then we are workers.
Love Your Neighbor As Yourself
The second love flows out of the first. If loving God is vertical, loving others is horizontal, and Jesus said it’s “like it,” the same love turned outward. Practically, that looks like serving one another, using whatever gifts God has given you. When someone asked me recently what I’d like for them to do here at CBC, I asked back, “What do you like to do? How has God gifted you?” That’s how service should work among us.
It also looks like bearing with and forgiving one another, because we live in community and people will let us down, and we will let others down too. And it looks like praying for one another, even, as Matthew 5 says, praying for our enemies. None of this is optional decoration on the Christian life. It’s the second half of the one sentence.
Love Because You Have Been Loved
Here’s where the whole message turns. None of us have loved God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength every day of our lives. But Jesus has. He kept both commandments perfectly, for us. He loved the Father to the point of the cross, and even from the cross He loved others, praying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Because His righteousness is credited to our account, Christ can live in us and love through us. As I said to our church, “You love the way that you’ve been loved.”
Discussion Questions
- Jesus answered “what do you think about Christ” right after being asked about the greatest commandment. Why do you think loving God and loving others always comes back to who Jesus is?
- Which of the four practical ways to love God, heart prepared, mind renewed, voice in song, or strength and possessions given, do you most neglect right now?
- Is there a grudge you haven’t released or a neighbor you’ve never prayed for? What would it look like this week to love them as you’ve been loved?
Heads bowed, eyes closed, I asked our church two questions and I’ll ask you the same: which of these two loves has grown cold in you, your love for God or your love for people? We don’t do any of this to earn His love. We respond to Him in love because He loved us first, and because He lives in us, we’re able to love others. Wherever you are reading this, whether you were with us Sunday or you’re discovering Community Baptist Church for the first time, I’d invite you to ask the Lord right now to show you where your heart has grown cold, and to trust that He is faithful to meet you there.
