“You shall love the Lord…this is the great and foremost commandment,” Jesus, Matthew 22:27-28
I decided that only religion - only a nonargumentative faith in a surrogate parent who, unlike my real parent, embodied love, power and justice in equal measure – could do the trick Plato wanted done [of a single unifying vision that explains the universe]. (Trotsky and the Wild Orchids, an autobiography by Richard Rorty, a postmodern and influential atheistic philosopher.)
"You have made us, O Lord, for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." (Confessions, Augustine)
It is days before His crucifixion. Jesus is teaching in the temple of Jerusalem. He is repeatedly being challenged by the religious elite of Israel. Testing Him (v.35), a lawyer asks, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (v. 36) To which Jesus replies, quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.” (v. 37)
Why does God command that we love Him? Isn’t God like a megalomaniac dictator who erects hundreds of statues of himself and demands strict allegiance? Why is God not most please when we love a great human being like Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King, Jr.? Why must we love God? Is God conceited?
Simply (but not simplistically), God is worthy of our love because of who He is. Not only is He the Uncaused First Cause, but He is the embodiment of love, power and justice (that Rorty craved but never acknowledged). God doesn’t merely love; He is love. God doesn’t merely exercise justice; He is justice. God doesn’t merely possess power; He is power. Any high example of love, justice and power are but shadows of the Almighty.
In my opinion, nowhere else in Holy Scripture is the character of God on display as it is in Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) yet Christ died in our place (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24); God’s wrath on sin is not merely dismissed, rather it is fully satisfied (Romans 5:9). Since the penalty of our sin has been extracted and justice accomplished, salvation is now offered as a free gift to all who ask for it (Revelation 21:6; Romans 10:9).
The cross of Jesus Christ is that place where the Greatest Love in the universe merge with the Greatest Judge in the universe. And when Christ rose from the dead, the greatest enemy of man, death, was rendered powerless. Christ is, as Anselm of Canterbury said a thousand years ago, the greatest conceivable being, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Think about it: one cannot improve on the attributes of Jesus. All positive attributes of other gods and prophets find their superior expression in the Lord Jesus Christ!
In World War II the Nazis executed over 1 million people at the Auschwitz Concentration camp. Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe was Auschwitz prisoner #16670. His crime: hiding Jews from the Nazis. In July 1941, three prisoners escaped, prompting the Nazis to pick ten men at random to be starved to death in an underground cell as retribution. When one of the men cried, "My wife! My children!”, Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
For the next two weeks Maximillian Kolbe ministered to and prayed with his cellmates until dehydration and starvation claimed everyone. Kolbe was the last of the ten to die. Only someone who understood what Christ did for him could do what Kolbe did at Auschwitz. Maximillian Kolbe’s substitionary death for one innocent man points us to Him who substitionally gave “His life as a ransom for many” who are guilty (Matthew 20:28). Christ alone is worthy to be loved with all of [our] heart, all of [our] soul and all of [our] mind (v. 37).
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| Kolbe in Auschwitz stepping forward to offer himself as a substitute. |
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