Pieces of the Puzzle

Every person, every business, every community develops a reputation.

Mention a favorite restaurant and someone remembers the food. Mention a particular store and someone remembers how they were treated there.

Churches develop reputations too.

So here is a question worth asking: What do we hope the church is known for?

Friendly. Caring. Generous. A place where people belong?

Those are all good things. But Jesus invites us to ask a deeper question: What does it mean to be a community centered on Christ?

The Christian life begins with an invitation: “Follow me” (Matthew 4:19). It begins with grace—with God moving toward us before we ever move toward God. And people welcomed by grace learn to make room for others.

But what does that life increasingly look like?

Matthew’s Gospel gives us an answer when someone asks Jesus a deceptively simple question:

Out of everything God asks of us, what matters most?

Jesus Goes to the Heart

In Matthew 22:34–40, a legal expert asks Jesus:

“Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
— Matthew 22:36

By this point in Matthew’s Gospel, religious leaders have repeatedly challenged Jesus, and Matthew tells us that this question is another test.

But it is also an important question. With hundreds of commandments in the Law, Jewish teachers wrestled with how they fit together and what stood at the center.

In other words: What holds all of this together?

Jesus answers by drawing from two passages in the Hebrew Scriptures—Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18:

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
— Matthew 22:37–39

Then Jesus says something remarkable:

“All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
— Matthew 22:40

Everything hangs here.

Like a door hanging on its hinges, everything else depends upon these two commands:

Love God. Love your neighbor.

Love is not simply one piece of the Christian life. Love is at the heart of the Christian life.

And if love is at the heart, Jesus’ answer raises a deeper question for anyone seeking to follow Christ:

What does it actually mean to love God with all that we are?

Love God With Your Whole Life

Jesus says:

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind.”
— Matthew 22:37

In other words, love God with all of you.

For some, loving God has been part of life for as long as they can remember. Others may still be discovering what it means to know or trust God. Wherever we find ourselves, Jesus describes a life increasingly turned toward God.

Our thoughts. Our desires. Our choices. Our relationships. Our priorities. The way we use our time and resources.

All of it.

Loving God with our whole lives means more than feeling affection for God. It means learning to trust God, seeking God in prayer and worship, listening for God’s direction, and allowing God’s love to shape what matters most to us.

Loving God is not something we add to the rest of our lives. Love for God begins to shape the way we live the rest of our lives.

That understanding is deeply rooted in the Wesleyan tradition.

John Wesley believed that the goal of Christian life was holiness. By holiness, Wesley was not talking about becoming more religious than everyone else. He was describing a life increasingly filled with love for God and love for others.

Jesus himself connects these things. Love God. Love your neighbor.

At the heart of holiness is love.

That gives us an important way to think about spiritual growth.

Sometimes we measure our faith by how much we know, how often we attend church, how many Bible studies we have completed, or how many years we have followed Jesus. Those things can help us grow, but they are not the goal.

The deeper question is:

Am I becoming more loving?

Jesus does not allow us to answer that question only by looking at our relationship with God. He refuses to separate love of God from love of neighbor.

Love Takes Shape in the Way We Live

First John puts the matter rather directly:

“Those who say, ‘I love God’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars.”
— 1 John 4:20

Those are strong words. John is not giving Christians another group of people to condemn. He is confronting the contradiction of claiming love for God while refusing to love people.

Love of God becomes visible in the way we love people.

When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he is quoting Leviticus 19:18. The surrounding verses show just how broad and concrete that love is.

God’s people are instructed to provide for the poor and the immigrant (Leviticus 19:9–10), not to steal or deceive (vv. 11–12), to pay workers fairly (v. 13), not to take advantage of people who are vulnerable (v. 14), to practice justice (v. 15), and not to stand by when another person’s life is threatened (v. 16).

These are not simply instructions for isolated acts of kindness. God is describing the kind of community God’s people are meant to become—a community whose life together is shaped by love.

In other words, biblical love is not simply a feeling.

Love does something.

Sometimes love listens. Sometimes love gives. Sometimes love protects. Sometimes love tells the truth. Sometimes love makes room. And sometimes love asks us to change.

Love seeks the good of another person, not simply the preservation of our own comfort.

That is where Jesus’ command becomes more challenging than it first sounds.

Love God.

Love your neighbor.

Simple enough to remember. Much harder to live.

There are people we find easy to love and others we struggle to understand. There are relationships where love is complicated. Some hurts cannot simply be brushed aside. Sometimes discerning what love requires takes prayer, wisdom, courage, forgiveness, justice, and healthy boundaries.

So what do we do with the truth that none of us loves perfectly?

We Are Still Learning to Love

Even after years of following Jesus, we discover places within ourselves where love still needs to grow.

We lose patience. We make assumptions. We hold onto resentment. We choose what is comfortable instead of what is loving.

Following Jesus is not something we finish. Neither is learning to love.

Perhaps, then, a better question than “Have I arrived?” is:

Where is God inviting my love to grow?

Maybe toward someone I find difficult to understand.

Maybe in a relationship where I need to listen more carefully.

Maybe in the way I speak about people with whom I disagree.

Maybe in making room for someone whose experience is different from mine.

Maybe even in learning to receive grace and love for myself.

John Wesley believed that God’s grace does not simply meet us once and then leave us on our own. God’s grace continues working within us, helping us grow in holiness and love.

Methodists traditionally call this sanctifying grace.

As Paul writes, God is at work within us, enabling us to desire and work toward what pleases God (Philippians 2:13).

God is still at work in us.

Still softening what has become hard.

Still healing what has been wounded.

Still challenging what has become self-centered.

Still teaching us how to love God and our neighbors more fully.

We have not arrived. We are being formed.

And if all of this leaves us thinking, I don’t love like that very well, the Christian life does not begin with our ability to love God or our neighbor.

It begins with God’s love for us.

We Love Because God First Loved Us

First John brings us back to the foundation:

“We love because God first loved us.”
— 1 John 4:19

Notice the order.

God loves first.

We do not love God so that God will love us. We do not love our neighbors to prove that we are good Christians. Holy love is not something we manufacture by simply trying harder.

God’s love comes first.

As Paul reminds us, “God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Grace meets us before we have everything figured out. Grace meets us before we have learned to love well.

And grace does not leave us where it found us.

God’s love meets us, works within us, and begins reshaping our hearts and lives. As we learn to trust that love, the love we receive begins to flow through us toward others.

Love received becomes love lived.

It becomes compassion when someone is hurting.

It becomes courage when someone needs an advocate.

It becomes listening when someone needs to be heard.

It becomes generosity when someone is in need.

It becomes truth when silence would be easier.

It becomes making room when our instinct is to protect our own place at the table.

Not perfectly. Not all at once.

But grace keeps shaping us toward holy love.

What Will We Be Known For?

So what do we hope Christians—and Christian communities—will be known for?

There are plenty of good answers.

But somewhere near the top of the list should be this:

They love.

Not simply that we talk about God’s love, but that people experience something of God’s love among us—in the way we speak, in the way we treat people with whom we disagree, in the way we care for those who are hurting, in the way we seek justice, and in the way we make room for one another.

Jesus told his disciples:

“This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.”
— John 13:35

Perhaps the question to carry with us, then, is not simply, “Do I love God?”

Perhaps it is:

“Where is God’s love inviting me to grow?”

We will not love perfectly. We are still being shaped, still learning, still following.

But we do not begin with our ability to love.

We begin with God’s love for us.

“We love because God first loved us.”
— 1 John 4:19

And by the grace of God, love received becomes love lived.

May that love shape us.

May that love become visible in us.

And may that be what followers of Jesus become known for.