It’s That Simple
29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Yahweh made it simple for us. As we go through life, we as human beings tend to over complicate things. What starts as a simple task can, over time, become bogged down with overthinking and the addition of steps that were never meant to be there. Sometimes, we have to step outside of something to see what it has become in order to reduce it back to its simplest form. In the above passage, Christ gives a simple answer to a question asked by one of the scribes. He often gave simple answers to questions that were asked of him, and he would even speak in parables so as not to create confusion.
In answering the scribe in the above example, Jesus could have easily given a 2 hour speech titled “THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT.” He could have talked to the scribes in their language and used complicated examples to explain his point. Instead, he made it simple. Love God and love people. Jesus knew that access to the Kingdom wasn’t going to come through church leaders and scribes. It was going to come through and from a people that acknowledged him as the Christ, and then turned to the Father.
As we go through our week, let’s get back to the simple. I would encourage you to observe the difference circumstances you find yourself in and make sure you are not adding “extra steps” to things that require a simple approach. Loving God and people is one of many commandments Jesus taught, but his teachings were always accessible, relatable, and easy to understand.