I Failed to Love

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus replied:
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Matthew 22:36-40 NIV

[Jesus said], "If you love me, you will obey what I command."
John 14:15 NIV

     I don't need to think very hard to remember some of my failures to love others, and there are surely many more such failures than my memory retains. And each one of those is rooted in a failure to love God! One fair way to summarize my life would be to say, "Charlie has consistently broken the greatest commandment."

     The God revealed in Jesus--the God who is really there--takes love very seriously. Whenever I fail to love, someone He loves suffers for it. If God is just--and He is--I am in serious trouble! I should try my best to be more loving of course, but I will never meet His standard--the bar is set too high for me.

     But God, who always practices what He preaches, loved me enough to suffer for my sins on the cross in the person of Jesus. He paid the entire debt I owe for all my failures to love. His forgiveness is therefore both just and free. I only needed to see how I had failed to love God and accept his forgiveness-gift by asking him for it. A proper gratitude on my part will result in a more perfect love for Jesus, which was my greatest need all along.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23 NIV