The greatest commandment is of course love "God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself." (Jesus, circa 30A.D.) Have you ever fulfilled all that is commanded by that law even for a couple of hours? Do you put God above all 24/7? Do you love your neighbor as your self?
Tell me not to steal my neighbor's jet ski, that I can do. But Love him!?! What if your neighbor is a homosexual atheist with a body ravaged by AIDS? Do you love him? Will you take him a casserole? Bath him? Hold his hand as he dies? Heck, I don't even love my wife as myself and she treats me like a king.
When Christ told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions and follow Him was He really condemning material wealth or did our Saviour really hit the ruler where he failed to fulfill that law after boastfully claiming to have kept the whole law? The passage clearly teaches it was the later.
If you really say you love God with all your heart and your neighbor as your self you don't need Christ. You trust your ability to love God with ALL YOU HEART I put my trust in Christ who fulfilled that law perfectly and imputed that love to me.
I believe you are splitting hairs.
The whole essence of God’s love for us is one of Gift and Response—God is the gift-giver, we are the responders and this glorious exchange has been echoing down the corridors of time since the Cross——or rather more accurately, since God promised a Redeemer in the Garden.
AMEN!!!
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." -- 1 John 1:8
I ask my RC friends who they would rather be employed by? A boss or a father?
A man labors for a boss to please him and get a paycheck. A man labors for his father because his father loves him.
One is recompense; the other gratitude and love.
But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." -- Romans 4:4-5"Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.
Amen.