You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second IS LIKE IT: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. (NKJV) Matthew 22:37-39
(MSG) Joh 13:35 This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”
So often we don’t know how to live with our fellow men because they are so different from us. It is so easy to cut someone off. So often we just turn to God and build our relationship with Him and we fulfill the 1st Commandment while we happily go on without the 2nd Commandment. However, look at these words from Jesus in (NKJV) Matthew 7 v 22-23 On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
To me this means that we cannot ignore the 2nd Commandment – it is not good enough! So, we’ll have to figure it out!
Why does it often happen that we meet someone and we spend lots of time together because we like being together and we love life together until he or she does something we don’t like. Our reaction is that of shock, disappointment and we think “How could he or she do that?” and then we start the “move away from each other” process. We may even find some communication techniques or even go and see someone to help us with our relationship but nothing seems to restore the magic we had. The root question we all ask is “Why can’t everyone just be like me?” If we all had the same values and principles, life would be so much easier! Despite some people’s bold broadcast that they don’t care what other people think of them, I think there is a lot of hurt behind those words and those hurts are covered by this bold statement. The fact is, we all want to be liked, and we all want to be accepted and we all want to be loved BUT at the same time, WE WANT EVERYTHING to go OUR WAY!
This means we feel loved or accepted if others behave in specific ways and similarly, we express love in our unique way as well – however we believe it should be done. This is as basic as I love salty treats and you love sweet treats. You can bring me as many sweet treats as you want but I won’t appreciate your efforts and feel you really care about me until you bring me some salty treats. So, just as we need to be treated a certain way to feel loved, we will get nowhere with other people if we don’t give them what they need to feel loved and valued.