God’s Greatest Commandment

Following God is not very complicated but it is difficult at times as we must suffer and strive to accomplish it.  It really all comes down to the one thing.  Love Him 100%. 

This really is the simplicity of our devotion to Christ and the center of the good news of the gospel.  Once you truly come to know this truth you like me will be screaming Eureka!!!   Kind of reminds me of the “I could of had a V8 commercials”.  I finally get it.  God meant what He said and I now I see it.  Do you?   Jesus stated this so simply yet we have made walking in purity and devotion to Christ way too complicated and full of egregious errors to boot.  In response to the Pharisees asking what was the greatest commandment of the Law, Jesus said this.

Matthew 22:35 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL thy heart, and with ALL thy soul, and with ALL thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang ALL the law and the prophets.”

This is it folks.  If we truly do these two things above, we are walking in holiness and obedience before God.  Without holiness, nobody shall see the Lord.  We are made Holy via the process of sanctification that starts and is continued only when we are obeying these two commandments, on which Jesus said all the other commandments are derived.   The imputed righteousness of Christ is only for our PAST SINS as any serious study of Scripture will readily make clear, from that point on, we must overcome.  That is how we are saved.

God changes not.  Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forevermore.  False teachers have deceived Christians to believing the old testament is no longer valid to us today.  God has always told us what his foremost commandment was, all you have to do is read what Moses contributed to the Scriptures.  For example the book of Deuteronomy speaks to the eternal blessing and curses of God and speaks to how God will destroy those that do not give Him their whole heart.  Praise God though for His promises however that tell us He will restore us if and when we turn back to Him.

Deuteronomy 30:6 The LORD will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your fathers, ¹⁰ if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul.   Space doesn’t allow me to show you the scores of passages that give us this command over and over again.

Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  He fulfils the law in us when we walk in obedience and holiness with Him. When we walk in holiness we are not under law, but the law of God still stands.  This topic on the law will be a blog topic very soon and I hope to expose the false teaching about the nullification of the law; the same teaching that kept me ensnared in the error of the lawless and continues to ensnare the vast majority of professing Christians.  Many are slaves to depravity because of this false teaching.  According to Jesus, not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away until the restitution of all things  — which is when Jesus returns to take us home and not one day before.   False teachers have told “us” over and over again that we cannot keep God’s commandments.  What did God say?

Deuteronomy 30:11-14 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. ¹² It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” ¹³ Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” ¹⁴ No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

1 Corinthians 10:13 NO temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. 

If we have the true Word of God in our hearts, we can obey, we just need to choose to do so.  We can do all things thru Christ who strengthens us.   All who harbor idols (sin) in their hearts do not love God with their whole heart and have been blinded to the truth.  God’s word tells us that one of the consequences for holding on to idols will be our ignorance and lack of understanding of the truth of His Word.    That is the Babylon False Church that dominates our end time church system.  If we turn away from the truth, we will fall away and very many Christians are under the deceptions prophesied throughout the Scriptures but sadly they do not see it. 

Rev 3:17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, BLIND and naked.  Spoken to the church at Laodicea, the ones that needed nothing that were under the false security spoken by false teachers speaking to them “peace & safety”.  Jesus went on to tell them, they needed to go thru the fire to be refined; meaning they had not died to self, they had not suffered, they did not love the Lord with all their heart.  They were lukewarm and would be spit out of His mouth if they do not overcome. 

I am sharing this message of truth with you out of love and not condemnation.  I want no following, I am just a mere man looking to serve God and He has driven me to write this post and this blog in general.  God has used this to open my eyes and hopefully open a few of the readers eyes if they are so drawn to the truth by God. 

Obeying God is not optional, it is essential to do the will of God.  Only those that do the will of God will enter heaven, any other teaching is false teaching and is putting people on the broad road that leads to destruction.  Read Matthew 7:11-24 (click here to read) if you have any doubts about this immutable truth of God’s word.  But obeying God’s law does not require us to memorize a list of 1,000 Do’s and Do Not’s, it requires us to really do one thing and only one thing but we must do it with a pure heart.  

Love the Lord thy God with ALL your heart!

If we put anything above God, He does not have our whole heart and we cannot walk in the spirit and we cannot practice righteousness.  We will not be at peace in our life and the enemy can use all such idolatry in our hearts to keep us in bondage, deceive us and over time build strongholds that take us away from the truth.  Oh sure, many of us do good “most of the time” yet our whole heart is not given to God.  We are holding on to sin of various kinds.  For some it may be drinking or sexual immorality; others it may be gossip or slander, and some may be driven by pride, greed or both.  Things like pride or greed can take many forms, be it money, fame, praise, material lusts, want of friends etc. It matters not to God the form as any of this which is practiced means God does not have your whole heart and you are a law-breaker. 

The huge error that has led to the great falling away, or Apostasy as it is also called is the teaching that says we can live in our sins and still be in the will of God and reap eternal life.  Jesus spoke often about the fake Christians also known as hypocrites that worshipped Him and would worship Him in vain.  Vain worship is of no effect my friends.

Mark 7:6-7 He answered and said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 

       This people honors Me with their lips,
      But their heart is far from Me.
       ⁷ And in vain they worship Me,
      Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men

The tares or the goats referenced throughout scripture did not love God with their whole heart.  They had idols in their heart.  They loved sin or possessions or family or jobs or fame or fortune or reputation or their lusts more than they loved God.  If we simply taught on this one commandment, on which all others hang, there would be repentance throughout the land and the scales would fall off people’s eyes.

God looks to our heart to judge us.  We cannot fool Him.

Jeremiah 17:10 “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct,  according to what his deeds deserve.”

Without a pure heart, we are double minded, in other words fakes and pretenders having both a sinful nature and a divine nature.  It is not possible to have both, if you claim to have both you are double minded, your prayers are not heard and James tells us we had better get real about it.  This the process of sanctification of dying to self and putting on the divine nature of Christ. 

James 4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

If we hold on to sin of any kind we are holding back our love and our heart from God.  In the Matthew 12 passage above, Jesus said there was a second commandment that was like the first one.  That commandment is simply:

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

We must walk in love.  Almost all sin is based on selfishness, which is the opposite of love.  Selfishness is when it is all about us and our ambition.  We want to be Lord over our life, we want the attention, the praise and we simply don’t want to give it ALL up to the true Lord — Jesus Christ.  It is all about me, me, me but it is supposed to be all about Him, Him, Him.  This lording over our own lives and pursuing selfish gain/pleasure is at the root of all sin and is the opposite of servant-hood.  This reminds me of Jesus asking the question in Luke 6:46

Why do you call me Lord Lord and not do what I say?

Love doesn’t mean simply being nice or not hurting someone’s feelings as true godly love includes rebuke and discipline to awaken people to the truth and save their souls.  Godly love will speak up when it needs to.  But we must always be seasoned with salt and be an example in how we conduct ourselves to exhibit true love.  God and I are still working a few things out in this regard but my leanings will always be to speak truth in boldness rather than speak a watered down message that leaves people in bondage but leaves them “liking me”.

Jesus provided more definition to this commandment to walk in love in John’s gospel.   We are to love others as He has loved us.

John 15:12-13 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 

How did Jesus love us?  He gave everything to us, even His life even though we did not deserve or merit anything for our deeds were evil before we come to true faith.  He humbled himself and put His needs dead last while elevating our needs.   Jesus model was the opposite of the works of the devil we see manifest in many Christians. This includes the sin roots of pride, selfish ambition, jealousy, envy, lusts of various kinds, strife, dissensions to name just a few.  We are to walk as He has walked.  Do you understand this?

1 John 2:3-6 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. ⁴The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. ⁵But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: ⁶Whoever claims to live in him MUST WALK as Jesus did.

We cannot love our neighbor as ourselves until we DIE TO SELF.  We must crucify our sinful nature and through the power of God’s grace mortify the deeds of the flesh.   Paul help clarify Jesus’ riddle about saving our life by losing our life.  We must get clear on this as anything else PROVES to God that we do not love Him with all our heart.

Romans 8:13  For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live,

This is where false teaching has led many astray.  If we suffer for a little while, we will be purified, we will come through the refining fire of gold and silver spoken of in the Scriptures.   There is a real cost of discipleship that people do not understand or willfully reject by loving their fleshly lusts more than God.  To produce fruit for God, we must DIE.  We cannot love others like God has loved us until this happens.  Our sinful nature will not allow us to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We must put it to death.  Here Jesus gave us the metaphor about the kernel of wheat dying but then producing life.

John 12:24-25  Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. ²⁵ He who loves his life will lose it (doesn’t die to self) and he who hates his life in this world (does die to self) will keep it for eternal life.

This is what being born again is all about.  It is not about saying a prayer or going to church, although both activities if accompanied by a pure heart our pleasing to the Lord.  Please do not misunderstand me, there is a process of Christian maturity and sanctification that must take place to achieve the fullness of God’s divine nature.  But we must be on that narrow path and striving to be conformed to the image of Christ.  Peter gave us a nice passage to define the process on how we start with a tiny seed of faith and proceed to a full on walk of holiness before the Lord. 

2 Peter 1:5-9 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; ⁶and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, LOVE. ⁸For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.  

The process completes itself in LOVE.  A Godly love not love as defined by the world.  We are told in this above passage from 2 Peter and many places that if we do not do these things, we are BLIND to the truth.  Once the light that comes from these two commandments gets into your heart, I promise you the word of God will explode with revelation that you have never seen before.  You will be blind no longer!  Passages of scripture your mind’s eye have passed over will now gain your attention and the wisdom of God will become manifest in you.

Loving one another was a specific new command Jesus gave the disciples that was not in the original 10 given Moses.  Again we are to love others the same way Jesus loved us as discussed above.  A little more reasoning is given here however in John.

John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

This is the fruit by which we will shall be known.  Recall Jesus saying we would know them by their fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.  By loving others in a godly way, we show the world the love of God and bring darkness into the light.  That is exactly what Jesus did and we are being transformed into His image and likeness if we are truly on the path of righteousness.

Deception and Delusion

The Apostate church teaches that we can continue to live/practice sin and still be justified and be pure in the sight of God.  That is a lie as it clearly violates the first and foremost commandment.  Anything we wilfully practice that goes against God’s law is bona fide evidence we do not love God with all our heart.  If we do these things, we have an idol(s) and are practicing idolatry.  Unfortunately man has invented doctrines that have a form of godliness (ie they are religious) but inherently deny the power of God to transform us into a divine nature.

2 Timothy 3:1-5 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. ²People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, ⁴treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— ⁵having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

Paul told Timothy the last days would be marked by people playing church and practicing religion (ie worshipping Jesus with their lips) but these same people would be denying Jesus Christ as Lord by their deeds.  That is exactly where we are at my brothers and sisters.  It is the enemy who has blinded many.

When we do not love the Lord with our whole heart,  the enemy takes root and builds strongholds that  blinds us to the truth.  Over time if we remain without repentance (keep idols in our heart), we are deceived and will fall under the God sent delusion promised for the end times.  The delusion comes to those who take pleasure in their sin and do not love the truth to be saved. 

2 Thess 2:9-12 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, ¹⁰ and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. ¹¹ And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, ¹² that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Many people want to say that this truth that I am conveying here is judgmental and not loving in nature.  I beg to differ and attest that I am working out my salvation with fear and trembling, striving to take every mote out of my eye.  I judge not anyone’s heart yet I have a yearning for God’s Word and it is Him that is leading me to write these blog posts.  The Word of God will be our judge, and when the Word of God judges, it is not a man judging but it is indeed God judging.  I pray for all to have wisdom about this truth.  Luke 6 is a good expose on the law of reaping and sowing.  If we sow judgment we are judged by the same measure;  if we sow condemnation we are condemned – but it works the other way as well. If we sow love, we are loved by God.  Give and it will be given unto you.  That is the foremost commandment, in fact Jesus said I give you a new command Love One Another.

We need to be careful that we are not following preachers who tell us what our itching ears want to hear.  Paul warned Timothy about the end time church goers that would heap upon themselves preachers to tell them what their itching ears wanted to hear.  Satan indeed has infiltrated the “church” and has secretly introduced destructive heresy (2 Peter 2).   The Apostles warned the early church and those warnings about deception directly apply to us today.

1 John 3:7-11 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. ⁸He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. ⁹No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. ¹⁰This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

We cannot, under any pretext claim to love God with all our heart if we are practicing sin.  God will not be mocked.  We are illegitimate sons if we claim to be a child of God and practice sin in any fashion. 

What Part of “All” Do We Not Understand?

Jesus told us we cannot serve two masters.  Who is our Lord?  Jesus said for Him to be our Lord, we must serve only Him.

Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

Since the whole law is built on the one commandment to love God with ALL our heart, this post could go on forever on tangents and corollaries to this ONE truth.  I wanted to bring it to closure by showing you how high Jesus defined the bar in terms of loving Him 100%.   This is hard for me to write this as my family may read it but it is the truth and they like everyone need to know the truth.

Matthew 10:35-38 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to turn
   ” ‘a man against his father,
      a daughter against her mother,
   a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -
    ³⁶a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

 ³⁷“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; ³⁸and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Even our families, the possessions nearest our heart must come after God.  This does mean we are not to love them and fulfill our duties as parents, husband, wife, son or daughter.  But it does mean we are to follow Jesus and not sacrifice our love for Him in return for the approval of our families.  In worldly logic, this is preposterous yet this is exactly how Jesus defined it.  If your family takes you away from following Christ or they are living in rebellion, you are to be against them and for God.  Your whole heart is your whole heart, there is no carve out for family, Jesus is that serious about His commandment.  If the old nature is not put to death, we will not see the Lord.  There can be no deception about this if we want to see heaven.  Our sin nature must go bye bye, we must put on the divine nature by the power of God.

2 Peter 1:3-4 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. ⁴Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

We cannot be loving God with all our heart and yet be seeking the approval of men.  We need to be seeking the approval of God.  That is a litmus test of loving God with our whole heart.   If we seek the approval of others and place that before loving God with your whole heart, we will not see the truth in God’s word and will not WHOLLY love our neighbor as ourself.  We might well be very nice people but harboring and practicing sin before God all the while being religious. 

I have discovered an amazing truth about God’s Word.  If He has our whole heart, He opens our mind so we can understand the Scriptures.  I pray for wisdom and encourage you to do the same, but know this,  You Must Love the Lord With All Your Heart, ALL your mind and ALL Your Soul.

Luke 24:45 He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures

Anyone who knows me personally, knows that I have committed many sinful acts before God.  I did this while calling myself a Christian.  But I was liar and the truth was not in me.  I did not Love God with my whole heart and I certainly did not love my neighbor as myself.  But I am here to tell you, watch out.  I am a new creation in Christ.  The old me has passed away.  Jesus now has my whole heart.  I may lose friends and acquaintances over it, but I am not about to sacrifice the truth God has laid on my heart for the approval of men.  Hopefully I can have both, but God comes first and I will not seek approval of men, it will only come from my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who share a love of God and the truth.

May God Bless You Richly!!!