FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK:
THE GREAT COMMANDMENT VS THE GREAT COMMITMENT
Matthew 22: 34 - 40
It is funny, how this article started, while I was praying a word started to round my head, that word was COMMITMENT.
What is commitment? A promise, a pledge, a continuing obligation. Are we committed?, of course, through all our life, we are always committed to something, and sometimes to more than one thing.
An angry parent phoned her little boy’s Sunday School teacher and said: “Is it true that you told all the kids that they were crazy?
“No, I didn’t” replied the teacher, “but I did tell them they should ALL BE COMMITTED.”
The reading in Matthew 22 says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment.”
And you will say: Pastor, you are talking about the commitment nor the com-mandment. Precisely, this great commandment is our great commitment.
In this passage, Jesus was concerned for more than current religious command-ments. His answer avoided religious activities and emphasized in relationship with God. Keeping the great commandment in Jesus’ thought would be possible only in God’s love.
John Wesley said: “Lord, give me one hundred men who hate nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I will shake the world.”
To love God means to choose Him for an intimate relationship and to obey His commandments, to keep them in our hearts. The love of God demand more than a keeping of laws. It requires total submission of one’s life to God. Loving God and acknowledging his lordship both are required in the life of a Christian.
The whole self must be involved in loving God. All the powers that God gave us through creation must respond to Him. The heart being the control center requires the commitment of emotions. The soul the self-conscious life involves the dynamics of actions; and the mind through our thoughts, reasons and skills are bound up in commitment.
The command LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD calls for a volitional commitment to God that is personal, comprehensive, and wholehearted. Love for God results in love for others. Love for others will be possible only when it grows from the love one has for God.
Right religion requires the true Lord. Doing the right things is possible only when one has acknowledged the right Lord. The importance lay not in the right activities or commandments but in the acknowledgment of the right Lord.
Great religious commitment requires not just a great commandment but a Great Lord.
Do you want to commit yourself today, we all your heart, we all your soul and we all your mind to God? I pray that you have said YES.
MAY GOD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU
Pastor Dora