Thoughts on the Holy Week, it is all about love

When Jesus is asked in Matthew 22.34-40 and Mark 12.28-34 on what is the greatest commandment of the law, his answer astonishes “love God above all, and your neighbour as you love yourself”. One of the listeners (in Mark’s account of the story) gets the point loving God and the neighbours is worth of all the sacrificial system.

For a first century Jew, the places where heavens and earth intersect were the Temple and the Torah (the Law). Jesus is saying now that the intersection between heavens and earth is love, as the fulfilment of the law, and making hence the Temple unnecessary. This is again a revolutionary concept!

I believe that God created humans as relational beings. Our primary call is to love God and live in loving relationships. That was the original idea pictured in the story of the creation and the Garden of Eden. We were made in God’s image, bearers of His image for every generation. But we know that this only lasted for a limited time, and that sin entered the world and contaminated thereafter all our perceptions of love, of relationships and of the image of God. We are all broken people. Jesus comes to fulfil the requirements of the sacrificial law and start the new creation, by restoring in people the ability to love God, to love others and to love themselves as well. The actions of Jesus are finally the re-humanization of human beings, enabling us to be true bearers of His image.

Psalm 86.11 prays “teach me your way, oh Lord, and I will walk in truth; reunite my soul so I can fear you” (own translation). What a key prayer. The Cross of Jesus is where we are taught how to become humans, where the old ways are nailed and left. The price has been paid. And the Cross is the place where we get the truth, the truth of our identity, of who we truly are in Jesus. Yep, the Cross is the place where the pieces of our broken souls are joint together and ‘reunited’ to enable us to love God, to love our neighbours, and where our true being is restored, so that we can love ourselves as well, since we are God’s creatures, being in process of restoration, but confident that we are His works, hence a reason to praise Him, the Creator and author of each of us.

Psalm 139.14 “I praise you Lord for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are your works, and my soul knows it well”

Jesus’ sacrifice enables us to praise the Lord for whom we are! And of course, the implication is for our entire world. If we can simply live a loving lifestyle, bearing God's image, and being who we truly are, then the Kingdom of God is there!

Blessings!