All You Need -- June 1, 2009

8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Romans 13:8-10

Of course John Lennon wasn’t talking about God’s love when he wrote “All You Need Is Love”, but he wasn’t far off either. “Nothing we can do can’t be done.” “Nothing we can make can’t be made.” As beings created in God’s image, our greatest need is to love. In our brokenness we think our greatest need is to be loved but Jesus’ insistence on the greatest commandment being love God with all that we have and the second greatest being love your neighbor as yourself shows us that we need to be like God more than we need others to care for us. Love is based in God. He already loves us so we don’t ever need that. He loves us all the time. We need to receive His love so we have some to give to Him and others.

Loving others results in obeying the law. When we love others we don’t sin against them. Love easily contains all the law. Love’s fulfillment of the law even includes pleasing our God. Jesus told His disciples they were His friends if the obeyed His commands. (John 15:14) Our love will even result in us not sinning against God because of our love for Him. When we are loving Him we will not sin against Him either.

We are to keep our records straight. We aren’t to owe each other anything. When we sin we aren’t to leave things hanging. We are to wipe out that debt with sincere apology and true forgiveness. All we are supposed to leave unfinished between us is the debt of love we owe because of God’s love for us. As we consider love today it really is all we need. After we get the first two commandments correct, the rest will mostly fall into place. We owe each other love under God’s care for us. Let’s keep paying on the debt we owe to Jesus by paying it to the least of the brothers and sisters.

Love, Love, Love Is All You Need,

Pastor Jason