Fruit: Love God, love others (Part 1)

Matthew 22:34-40 - Fruit: Love God, love others, make disciples

The series

The life of a disciple of Jesus Christ is like a tree. The roots of the tree are our identity as sons and daughters of God. The trunk of the tree is the servant’s heart of Christ. A disciple who is firmly rooted in their identity in Christ is so secure that they can stoop to the lowest of places to love sacrificially.

The branches and leaves of the tree represent our unique calling or mission from God. This calling is how we reach beyond ourselves and bring comfort not only to the other members of Christ’s church, but also to the world around us.

We know that the whole point of a fruit tree is that it actually bears fruit. Producing fruit is simply what they do.

Introduction

If the end product of a high school education is a diploma, what is the “fruit” of a disciple of Jesus? Is it simply learning more information about God? No, it is not. It is much more.

My prayer is that we see that because of who Jesus’ is and what he has done, we are to bear the fruit of loving God and loving others.

Background

Jesus is in his final few days of his ministry on earth. He has inspected the temple and found that instead of a place of prayer for the nations it had become a mockery. Jesus’ people were supposed to be ready for him with hearts of worship and love and lives lived in repentance. Instead, they were hard-hearted. The leaders weren’t willing to give God his glory and the fruit of praise and glory from the people. They wanted it for themselves. So, Jesus cleansed the temple. He had judged it and found it wanting. He, the living temple, would replace it.

Now these unfaithful leaders have attempted to put an end to Jesus’ ministry with a series of questions to trap him. So far, Jesus has silenced them all and showed himself to be worthy of amazement.

Love God

In Matt. 22:34-40 we see that when tested by a religious leader, Jesus passes with flying colors. The question, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus’ answer was to give the great and first commandment and then a second, which was really a summary of the Ten Commandments in two parts. The great and first commandment is to love God with all our being…heart, soul, and mind. In Mark 12:28-31 and Luke 10:27-28 we see that we should love him with all our strength as well. This is also found in the Shema which is found in Deuteronomy 6:5, which is why Jesus quotes it first. This is the fulfillment of the first tablet of the law, the first four commandments. What does this mean?

All our Heart

We are to love God from the very root or core of our being...with all our heart. Think of the seat of our physical, spiritual, and mental life, the real me on the inside (Ex. 20:3) or the hub of the wheel of our existence (Prov. 4:23). Have you ever seen when someone develops contempt in a relationship? They no longer care anymore and have given up.

Our love for God shouldn’t be like this, it should look like a young man who has just met the love of his life. He is consumed with seeing her, spending time with her, and will stop at nothing to be with her. He is sick without her; everything he does is centered around her.

All our soul

We are to love God with a white hot, intense fire that is constantly blazing...with all our soul. Think of this as our spirit, the self-conscious life (Ps. 42:1-2) or the seat of our emotional activity. Have you ever seen a coal on a fire that has gone out? It isn’t providing heat or light.

Our love for God shouldn’t be like this, it should look like a red-hot coal, giving off heat and light. Consumed by its love for God and being consumed with his desires. This love must be a pure love, an affection for God with no mixture or dilution.

All our mind

We are to love God with the fullness of our mental faculties…with all our mind. Think of this as our intelligence and thought life (2 Cor. 10:3-5) or the seat and center of our purely intellectual life and our dispositions and attitudes. Have you ever watched someone take a test, or done it yourself, when they quickly read the question and they quickly answer without giving it much thought?

Our love for God shouldn’t be like this, it should be a straining, like trying very hard to think of a solution to a problem. This love must seek the fullness of the riches of understanding of the revelation of Jesus Christ, to know all about him and all that he has done, is doing, and will do. It must seek to know the height, depth, width, and breadth of the love of Christ for us. It is a full-on intellectual pursuit of God.

With all our strength

We are to love God with every bit of power and energy we have...with all our strength. Think of our bodily powers, the will (Rom. 12:1) or power. Have you ever seen someone do something with only minimal effort, like trying something only halfway and then giving up?

Our love for God isn’t like this, it should look like an Olympian right at the finish line giving every ounce of their energy to finish first. This love should give all it has to seek and find God and keep all of his commands. This is the way we love God with all our strength.

What is this love then?

In the Theological Dictionary of the Bible, it sees love for God like this: it exists for Him as a slave for his master. It listens faithfully and obediently to His orders, to place oneself under His lordship, to value above all else the realization of this lordship. It bases one’s whole being on God, clings to Him with unreserved confidence, leaves with Him all care or final responsibility, and lives by His hand. It hates and despises all that do not serve God or come from Him, breaks with all other ties, cutting away all that hinders, to snap all bonds except that which binds to God alone.

What is the fulfillment of this law of love?

In Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law of Love toward God. Love Yahweh your God...Jesus doesn’t just tell us about the Shema’s devotion, but he lived this devotion his entire life. Throughout the gospels, Jesus shows his love to God with his whole being. He always sets his Father’s will above his own. He doesn’t simply call others to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind, and strength, he actually does it, and demonstrated it as he obeyed God’s divine will in costly, self-sacrificial action...on the cross and into the grave. He did all this so that when we are united to him, his perfect love is counted as ours.

What is our motivation and power to love God like this?

First and foremost, we understand that God loved us before we loved him and not because of anything in us. God’s love was demonstrated in that the Father sent his Son to rescue us; the Son, Jesus Christ, willingly was made a curse for us, and the Spirit gives us new life. Because we have received such a great gift from such an amazing God, we love him. But we love him because he first loved us.

One of the practical ways we love him is by keeping his commandments, but not out of duty, trying to earn his favor, but out of delight, because they represent his character, nature, and his best for us. Because we are his children, we want to be like him, and thus we obey him.

Love Others

But Jesus didn’t just stop here. He could not simply respond by saying that the great and first commandment is to love God with all our being. He saw the command to love God as connected with the great and second commandment, to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is the fulfillment of the second tablet of the law, the last 6 commandments. He saw all the 10 commandments as a consistent whole. This is why James says that if you break one, you break them all.

But where did he get this from? Jesus was quoting Leviticus 19:18, which says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” This isn’t a command to love ourselves, it is assumed that we do this rather well. Instead, Jesus is asking that we act toward others with the same degree of goodwill as toward ourselves.

What does this love look like?

A quick glance at Leviticus 19 shows us that loving our neighbors as ourselves is caring for them when they are poor, not stealing from them, not lying to them, being fair in our business dealings with them caring for them in their disabilities like deafness and blindness, dealing justly with them, avoiding of slander toward them, keeping from “jeopardizing” their life, avoiding “harboring hatred against them”, rebuking them when necessary for their and your good, and not taking revenge or bearing a grudge against them. This is an intense list. It is second, not because it is not important, but because if the source of our love is not in God, then we won’t be able to or even want to show God’s love to our neighbors.

What is the fulfillment of this law of love?

In Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law of Love toward our neighbor. Love your neighbor as yourself...Jesus doesn’t just tell us that we should love our neighbor, he actually does it, but even to a deeper extent, for he loves his enemy as himself. He shows this by giving his life “as a ransom for many”. He shows us what true love of neighbor is. He leaves heaven, comes to earth, takes on flesh, lives a life of love to God, love to man, living a life of sorrow and grief, loving others and helping them, and suffering and bearing the wrath of God so that he can set the captive free and credit this to our account.

What is our motivation and power to love others like this?

Because of the great love wherein he loved us, and because we have been born of God, and because love is of God, we love our neighbor. As we love God and our neighbor, we fulfill the summary or essence of the law. We do not do this to earn anything before God, or to be praised by people, but because our new heart now has God’s law written upon it, and our love and delight in God gives us the desire to be like him.

We understand that we must love our brothers and sisters in Christ in order to demonstrate the love of Christ in our hearts. We fulfill his “new commandment” by loving one another. As we do this, people will know that we are Christ’s disciples. This in turn fulfills the true law of love, which is to love our neighbor, essentially showing them Christ in our community characterized by love.

We understand, however, our neighbor to not be limited to simply our brothers and sisters in our churches, but even those whom we might naturally think of, or our culture would consider, as our enemies. Just as Jesus showed his amazing love and died for those who were his enemies, we show love to those who persecute us. Even as we suffer for doing right by the hands of our enemies or those who hate us, we will show love to them in gentleness and respect. Therefore, we will forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven us.

Application

The Christian life is a life of constant abiding in Christ. Without a life of dependence, acknowledging our helplessness and inability to love him and love others, we quite simply won’t be able to do it. We must acknowledge Jesus’ authority and as we will see next week, his power and presence. We must be filled with the Holy Spirit and live a life that is devoted to the word, prayer, fellowship, and mission.

So, we have seen today that the fruit of a disciple is love to God and love to others. Because of Jesus’ person and work, we can have confidence and assurance that we will produce the fruit that he asks.

But now, to conclude, let’s look at some practical ways we can move toward a more consistent life of loving God and others.

How do we seek God with all our heart? Here are a few ideas:

• Pray for a heart that seeks and longs for God. Pray for faith to believe that if you seek God, he will reward you with his presence.
• Cast away our other gods by sincerely seeking God’s forgiveness for chasing after them, and turn to Christ for their fulfillment. Examples of these gods may be self-love, other or self-approval, control, applause, safety, security, or a host of others.

How do we seek God with all our soul? Here are a few ideas:

• Pray for a passion for God. A passion that would be consumed with him as nothing else has ever consumed you in your life. That you would see him for who he is.
• Spend time with him. Be regularly engaged in prayer. See him as worthy of your love and love him for who he is not simply what he has done. Our love for God must have its foundation in the fact that God is supremely beautiful and lovely in and of himself.

How do we seek God with all our mind? Here are a few ideas:

• Disengage from any anti-intellectualism or anti-theological thinking. Some in our culture think that passion for God or love for God with your emotions or will is all that you need, and anything else will drive you to cold, dead religion. This is false. We are not to disengage our mind from worshipping God.
• Engage our mind in studying God’s character, attributes, and works. Read the word of God, use the cross-references, get a good study bible. Also, don’t be afraid of solid books that teach you about God and theology. Read them, compare them with Scripture, and try to understand more and more of who God is. Meditate on and study the person and work of Christ. Dig deep and drink long from him, he is the living water.

How do we seek God with all our strength? Here are a few ideas:

• Evaluate our priorities. Look at where you spend the most time and most energy. Is it watching Netflix, playing sports, entertainment, going out? Where you put your most time is probably where you are expending your strength. If you find you are pouring your strength out to something other than God, you are loving something else with all your strength.
• Live for God’s glory. I’m not saying that you should quit your job and move into a monastery, no matter how appealing that might be. Rather, I am asking you to change your perspective and thinking about where you spend your time, energy, and emotion. If you are working for your own pleasure and advancement, then your strength is being extended to something else. If you are working to eat and live, and give your resources for God’s purposes, then you are living with your strength for God.

So, how do we love our neighbor as ourselves? We must start with reorienting ourselves around loving God with all we have. Once we have this, then love for others becomes easier, because our focus is right. But practically, we can:

• Remember how much we are loved by God. You don’t have to live for yourself, God loves you and wants what is best for you. If you are fighting for your own rights, privileges, and are only watching out for yourself, you probably don’t know the love of Christ. The good news of the gospel is that the Father loved you so much that he sent his Son to live and die for you so that you could be adopted into his family. Stop living like an orphan when you aren’t one. Will he really abandon you?
• Look at people and see them. You must take on the attitude that Christ had. He took on flesh to live as we live and understand our plight. He understands us and then has compassion, and then acts. We must move from seeing people as “its” to seeing them as “thous”. In other words, we must see them as people made in God’s image, intrinsically valuable, unique and wonderful. We must assume that if we were them, we would be making the same choices they are. We must care for them because God does.
• We must look at the person of Jesus. We must see how he treated people, acted, and engaged all types of people. We must study the life of Jesus and ask him to make us love.

The conclusion to all this is quite simple...we must cast ourselves upon the mercy of God as it is found in Christ, and live out of his love for us.