Two Commands

Often in life the commandments of God seem to rub against each other a bit. It is often hard to know what to do at times in life. It is why the bible always calls us to wisdom. Wisdom will show us the way when life becomes difficult.

For example sometimes tensions arise between keeping confidences of things others have said to us and keeping relationships with nosy people. You know you cannot break confidence and yet you cannot confront the nosy people asking inappropriate questions because they will not understand.

There is a delicate balance at times maintaining a balanced view of the law in certain situations. Much wisdom, thought, and prayer is required.

In a biblical example David, when he was on the run, ate bread that was only permitted to be eaten by the priests. He ate what he should not eat in general and did what was right.

Is the law in conflict? No. The bible is quite helpful in that it gives us levels of wisdom. You see there is much specific guidance and some of the specifics can come into tension in situations in life. That is why the bible gives overarching principles.

The overarching principles are that we are to love God with our whole heart and love our neighbor as ourselves. You see the bible summarizes our direction easily for us when life becomes difficult.

The bible spells out the details to aid us to learn. But when we need wisdom because of the stickiness of life we should first pray, but also fall back to the overarching principle of biblical ethics of love. If we truthfully act in love after prayer and careful thought we will not be far off.

God's Commandments

I got a kick out of the fact that John Piper called the commandments of God “delectable.”  It makes me smile just thinking about that and it’s so true, the commandments of God really are delectable.

Two Commands and Their Implications

Two commands and their implications:

Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself are two central commands in the bible.  Jesus as the one who must fulfill the law perfectly on our behalf fulfilled both of these.  The interesting thing about the first command is that ALL our love is commanded from God and yet more is still required.  This must mean in fact that loving God with all our heart mind and soul is not in contradiction with loving ourselves and our neighbor.  There must be a type of love that not only places love in our neighbor but also is in fullness a love of God.  If this is true one may well expect the enjoyment of a good game of hockey in heaven.  We may take delight in it while at the same time placing our full love on God.  It would seem unreasonable to assume that if we can have compatible love with humans that we cannot have it with other things.  In fact we would be forced to say that Jesus had no love for anything but God and man if we said that.  But clearly God delighted in his creation before man came so clearly we may love anything in creation and still fully love God.  (I am not saying that we can fulfill this now but it would be possible were it not for sin)  The implications of this would be that loving the Lord with all our heart in heaven need not mean that we may love nothing else in heaven.  Heaven, contrary to some views would not be a place of constant worship of God.  It would be in a sense in that all activities would become worship but it implies that there will be worship and climbing mountains and enjoying sunsets that all place our full enjoyment on God.  If this doesn’t sound possible to you, you should consider if our Lord and savior Jesus Christ has not already fulfilled it.  It would seem he must have.  He had a love that was for man and yet gave all his love to God thus fulfilling the whole of the law.  Jesus is one in will with the father so when the father declared his delight over his creation it is Jesus as well who delighted in it. (And God doesn’t change (And unlike the philosophical giants would like us to think that is a VERY good thing))  So Jesus on earth delighted in his fellow humans (he is fully human and fully God) and in creation all the while giving all his love to God.  If these presuppositions and logic have truth to them there will be great Hockey games, epic D&D adventures (well I'm not positive about that one as I don't know how much fun fighting evil in a world where there is no evil is (but at least in that there will be great stories and thus roleplaying systems)), and stunningly deep Go games in heaven all of which are enjoyed while God is given all the love.