The Most Important Commandment

I was reading Mark and came across a passage, in it someone asks Jesus which is the most important commandment, Jesus said it is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” 12: 30 and the second commandment is “Love your neighbor as yourself” 12: 31. The man who asked Jesus agreed with Him saying it is “more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices” 12: 33, Jesus replies saying he is “not far from the kingdom of God” 12: 34. That struck me, and even though it is a simple passage I often read with little thought given to it I stopped and thought to myself “Wow, so it is more important to God that we 1) love Him and pursue Him before anything else and 2) love each other as ourselves, than any sacrifice we make.” Nowadays we don’t see many people making burnt offerings, but let’s use the word sacrifice as a modern term, so it’s as if God said to me He would be happier that I love Him and love others than give up baseball. Think about it, when we make a sacrifice it is a painful thing, not playing baseball would be like losing an arm for me, but when we love God and put Him first we naturally take the emphasis away from those things, in the action of loving God we become more like Him and make sacrifices in our lives! What would be better for me to give up baseball or love God so much that I 1) become like Him 2) drop sinful habits that inhibit my ability to be like Him and 3) love Him so much that even a simple thing like playing baseball becomes an act of worship. As for loving our neighbor, God loves all of us and made us and wants us to love each other, think how much it pains Him to see us fight. When we love each other as ourselves we lose that selfishness and become (once again) more like God, we take on His character which is why Jesus died, so that we can do that. Basically Jesus is saying “I don’t want you to give stuff up just to say you are unselfish and you love me, I want you to love me and change for the better because of that and become more like me”.