Why Loving God and Others Is the Whole Point
When you look across the pages of Scripture, from the Old Testament law to the letters of Paul, one theme rises to the surface again and again: relationship. Not religion. Not rule-keeping. Not spiritual performance. Relationship. It is the key vehicle God chooses to accomplish His purposes, both then and now. And if we're going to understand what it means to live with a healthy spiritual engine, we have to understand just how central relationship really is.
The Ten Commandments Are About Relationship
In Exodus chapter 20, God gives the Ten Commandments to Moses, and the structure itself tells us something. The first four commandments are all about our relationship with God. Have no other gods before Me. Don't make idols or worship them. Don't misuse the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Every one of those is about our vertical connection to God.
Then the next six shift to our horizontal relationships with one another. Honor your father and mother. Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal. Don't give false witness against your neighbor. Don't covet the things that belong to your neighbor. Why are these commands given? Because every one of those things breaks and harms relationship. They are inconsistent with God's nature, which is love, fellowship, and unity.
Even when God was giving the law to His people, He was centering their value system not just on how to behave, but on relationship. The commandments were never meant to be a behavioral checklist. They were meant to protect and preserve what matters most to God: our connection to Him and to each other.
Jesus Simplified What We Tend to Complicate
Fast forward through the rest of Scripture and we see Jesus take all of that and simplify it. He does this because we tend to complicate things. Whenever we wear a lens other than the one God intended, we create complexity. We've done this with making disciples. We've done this with relationship. We've done this in marriages. But if we would put the lens on of meaningful relationship with God and learn to live with that lens on, it would change our lives.
In Matthew 22, Jesus is being questioned by the religious leaders. They were trying to trick Him, and they asked, "What is the first and greatest commandment?" Jesus replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: love your neighbor as yourself. All the other commands and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commands" (Matthew 22:37-40).
That is a provocative thing to say. These people had been building their lives on the law for generations, and Jesus tells them that everything they had given their lives to obey, all the behavioral modifications they had made, it all hangs on two things: love God and love people.
If you're going to be the Church of Jesus, you better get used to running two plays for your offense. You love God and you love people. It works like Novocaine. You just give it time.
The Fruit of the Spirit Only Makes Sense in Relationship
Paul takes this same thread and weaves it through his letters to the early churches. In Galatians 5:22-23, he writes, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Against these things there is no law."
Here is the question worth sitting with: what difference do any of those things make when viewed through any lens other than relationship? How am I supposed to have peace with someone if I don't have a relationship with them? What difference does patience make if it's only directed inward? Kindness toward myself alone? These are relational terms. They were never meant to be measured in isolation. They grow and become visible in the context of how we live with one another.
Love Without Relationship Is Nothing
Paul drives this point even further in his letter to the Corinthians. First Corinthians 13 is often called the love chapter, and most of us have heard it read at weddings. But it was not written to a couple on their wedding day. It was written to a local church. Listen to it through the lens of relationship:
"If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
Think about that for a moment. Did you ever consider that you could do something really genuine for someone else and not love them in doing it? Paul says if you gave all of your possessions to the poor, the world around you would look at you and think, "This person is spiritually mature. They get it." But Paul says if you do that without loving others, it actually profits you, nor them, anything.
Don't Miss What Matters Most
Here is the significance of all of this. If we've been to church our entire lives, if we've taught Sunday school, if we've read hundreds of books on Scripture, if we have degrees from seminaries, if we never miss the weekend, if we attend every men's and women's Bible study and every event that anyone offers, but we don't value pursuing and loving others and living in relationship with God and each other, we've absolutely missed it.
Part of developing your spiritual engine is growing in the understanding that the reason God gives you His Word is so that He can put His character on display. He shows you what matters to Him. And from the very beginning, through all of the pages of the Old and the New Testament, it is very clearly laid out: relationship with God, relationship with others. You see it in the design. You see it in the spiritual fruit. All throughout Scripture, the biblical foundation for relationship is unmistakable.
The question for each of us is whether we are building our lives on that foundation, or whether we've been so busy with religious activity that we've forgotten the whole point. Love God. Love people. Everything else hangs on that.
