“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That question lies at the heart of mankind’s
hopes to stand before our Creator without fear.
Connected to that question is the related question of, “What is the
greatest commandment?” Jesus interacted
with those two questions on multiple occasions in the Gospels, and always came
around to the same answer, whether he was answering the question himself or
simply agreeing with the answer of someone else: Love God with everything you
have, and love your neighbor as yourself.
These two summations of the duties and responsibilities of the Law of
Moses are recorded in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. That these two requirements of total love,
for God and our neighbor, are an effective summation of the Law was one of the
few things about which Jesus and his adversaries among the ruling religious
clique of Jerusalem could agree. The
answer to the question is not in any doubt, in order to stand before God, we
must love him with everything we have, body, mind, soul, and strength, AND we
must love that which he loves, people created in his image, as we love
ourselves. This is what God requires of
us, the stark difference between Jesus and the self-righteous leaders who
opposed him is that Jesus knew full well that humanity was incapable of even
approaching this standard of perfection, let alone accomplishing it.
“What
must I do” is a failing proposition from the beginning. Because God is holy, our effort will always
fall far short. If we cannot “do”
anything to save ourselves, are we simply left without hope? From the very beginning, when God promised
Adam and Eve that he would one day send a redeemer, the answer to mankind’s dilemma
lay with God. The Messiah, God’s own
Son, was sent to remedy that which we could never do. What mankind is incapable of, Jesus did, what
we could not do for ourselves, he has done for us. Where does that leave us? Grace, God’s grace, that is our hope and our
trust, when we put our faith in what Jesus has accomplished, the Spirit of God
can begin to transform us, washing away our past sins, and starting us on the
road, through his power, to becoming a people that loves God with everything we
have and loves our neighbors, all of them, as ourselves.
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