Love God…..Love your Neighbor

With this post, I want to go back to basics……..way back.

I have said many times that Christianity is a simple religion. There are basically two rules, two ideas……..two jobs for a Christian.

Love God.

Love your fellow man.

So……….How do I love God?

How do I love my fellow man?

Globally, where does this put me……..as a Christian?

It puts me at the interface between the spiritual world and the temporal world. I am required to look in two directions. I am required to act in two directions. In a way I am required to operate…….to mediate between these two realms. If I do my job well, I draw these two very different worlds closer.

So…… what about these two very different worlds? Right now I am reading Revelation. Needless to say…….this is a tough read. But, Revelation gives us a glimpse at the interface between the spiritual world and the temporal world. A temporal man, John, visits the spiritual world. Revelation is a deeply symbolic book. I will not even try to explain or interpret the things described in it. What I will do is try to extract the main themes. And here they are:

Our temporal world is just that…… temporary. It had a beginning and it will have an end…….both our individual lives and our global corporate world will end. The details are hard to sort out. But we can count on one thing…….the end is going to be ugly.

Our lives in the temporal world are temporary. Our lives will end……..we will die. Our personal temporal world will end……one way or the other.

The spiritual world is permanent. It had no beginning. It will have no end. It is another dimension and we simply cannot clearly see it from where we stand. That does not mean that it is not real.

When we die, our existence in the temporal world will end. At that point we will become permanently and completely a part of the spiritual world……..a world that we cannot clearly see from here.

As human beings, like it or not, we have one foot in each of these worlds. We cannot avoid our relationship, our participation, in either of these worlds. We can ignore the spiritual world……and many of us do. But, that changes nothing. It is still there and we will one day be a part of it……..for better or worse.

We will one day exist in and deal with the spiritual world.

So, as a Christian, how do I operate……at the interface between these two worlds?

This takes me back to the two basic rules. The key to life…….in both of these worlds……… is love.

Love is outward looking. It is an act of giving…… to others. So, we, as Christians, are asked to give to God and to give to our fellow man. But, what can we give to God? I can only think of one thing…….and it happens to be the one thing that God wants the most…….. relationship. What can we give to our fellow man? There are many things both great and small. Of those, considering the eternal consequences, the greatest would probably be God…….a relationship with God.

So, it seems to me, that our calling, as Christians, is to draw our fellow man into relationship with God.

Evangelism is the highest expression of our love……. for both God and our fellow man. If done well, it can draw our temporal and our spiritual worlds closer.

In a word, we were put here……at the interface between God and our fellow man ………. to love.

We were put here to love.

And the greatest act of love is to help others find their way into relationship with God.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John, NIV

‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. ‘The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Jesus, NIV

 “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.

Jesus, NIV