2016.01.10_The Greatest Commandment

We became righteous through the righteousness of God
God is righteous. Even though nobody has ever seen God, God revealed His righteousness to the world. God’s righteousness is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the righteous one who revealed the righteousness of God to the world.
All men are sinners. Man’s sin can be classified into original sin and personal sin. As it is written in the Bible, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps 51:5), every man is a sinner before he is born into the world. Even a newborn baby who has never committed any sins is already a sinner. To put it simply, man is unrighteous. Faith is the only way through which the unrighteous man can receive the righteousness of God. We repent in order to cast off our unrighteousness and rely on the righteousness of God which He wants to put on us.
It was for our unrighteousness that Jesus died on the cross, and it is through the righteousness of Christ that we were made righteous. Jesus died for us, and because of Jesus we were saved. Thus we received the righteousness of God, not by our own deeds or efforts but as the gift of God. Romans 5:20 says, “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more”. This does not mean we should commit more sins in order to receive more of God’s grace. Instead, it means that grace abounds to the same degree that we realize our sins. Through grace, we were made righteous. Hence if God deems anyone as righteous, he is a righteous person. God justified us as righteous people, and sent the Holy Spirit to guarantee this.

God commanded the righteous ones to fulfill righteousness
A commandment drives a person to fulfill righteousness. We discovered new rules to life after we received Jesus Christ, which we were formerly unaware of. To obey God’s commandment is the way to follow the righteousness of God. The righteous keeps God’s commandment, whereas those who are not righteous do not keep His commandment.
In the Old Testament times, the commandment was within the Law. But there were such a considerable number of commandments that it was very difficult for a person to keep them all. The number of commandments increased as each prophet made further interpretations of the Law. This is similar to how a tree has a trunk, parent branches (thick and closer to the trunk), and lateral branches that come out from the parent branches. Though there are numerous commandments, their roots are the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is to serve no other gods apart from God; the second commands us not to make an image in the likeness of any creations; the third commands us not to take the name of God in vain; and the fourth is the commandment to observe the Holy Day. All of these commandments demand one thing: to love God.
In the case of the Catholic Church, changes have been applied to the Ten Commandments. The Catholics took away the second commandment which forbids making images of any creations and worshiping them, and instead split the tenth commandment about coveting one’s neighbors’ possessions into two separate commandments. As a result, the ninth commandment in the Catholic version of the Ten Commandments says that one must not covet his neighbor’s wife, while the tenth commandment forbids coveting one’s neighbor’s possessions. This is how the Catholics justify making images/statues of the so-called “saints” and bowing before them.
God gave His commandments to man so that he obeys them. However, it is certainly difficult for a person to keep and obey every single one of the many commandments. Jesus fulfilled the requirements of all of those commandments once and for all. This can be likened to a tree which someone cut down completely, where before, people tried picking off individual leaves. Jesus, who took care of the Law for us, now has a commandment which He wants us to keep. And that is, to love God.

Love
The one who loves God is the righteous man. We did not love God because we were unrighteous in the past. However, Jesus bore our unrighteousness through His death on the cross. We have united with Him. Therefore His death became our death, and by His resurrection – the resurrection of the righteous one – we were made righteous.
To love God means to seek God’s righteousness. The Lord said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt 6:33). If we seek God’s righteousness, that is, if we love God, He will provide us with everything we need. God did not spare His own Son but gave Himself up for us all. Will He not then give us all things freely along with His Son? However, if a person still cannot receive God’s help, it is probably because he does not acknowledge that he has God’s righteousness.
What is the degree to which we should love God? Every person loves his own self, his own body without having to be told. This is how it should be with our love for God. We must love God with all of our heart, all of our life, and all of our soul, just as we love our own self. And likewise love our neighbors also. When an expert of the Law asked Jesus, “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment”, Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
It is written in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love”. Those under the Law obeyed God because of their fear of God. However now we keep God’s commandments, not because we fear God but because we love God.
The reason people are self-conscious to give offerings at church or give out of compulsion is because they do not love God. On the contrary, a person is able to gladly dedicate their offering to God for the kingdom of God because he loves God. Sincere dedication is not possible when a person only has fear towards God. Giving offerings to God out of thanksgiving for His grace is a privilege of a person who loves God. It is also out of love for God that people are able to devote themselves in serving and performing their duties as given by the church.

Fulfill righteousness by keeping the principle commandment
There is an enormous number of commandments in the Bible, and Jesus said that all those commandments hang on the principle of love (Matt 22:40). What is a principle? For instance, the public often frown and grimace at today’s politicians and the endless fighting and hostility between the ruling party and the opposition. Strangely enough, even a well-respected person in society starts to conform to such political behaviors. There is a reason for that. Every political party has its own principles, and members of those parties are bound to follow those principles. In the same way, whoever believes in Jesus must keep His commandment, the principle of which is love.
We must love God and our neighbors with all of our life. None of us knows when we will depart from this world, for even a healthy and fit person can lose their life instantly from a car accident. One thing we have to understand is that our time on the earth is our only opportunity to love God as much as we want. To His believers, Jesus gave the new commandment to love one another, and emphasized that the way to fulfill all the commandments is to obey the new commandment. We must have love for righteousness. We have to love the Lord. We need to eat and drink of the Lord, put on the Lord, and thus transform ourselves wholly. The one who has faith has righteousness, and whoever has righteousness will strive to fulfill righteousness.