Most of us can easily recite the Great Commandment. But not one of us has ever loved God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Today, R.C. Sproul underlines the seriousness of what God's law demands of us.
You see, when we read the Great Commandment and we ask, “What is the Great Commandment?” We say, “Oh, we can recite that the Great Commandment is “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all of thy soul and all of thy strength, and so on, and thy neighbor as much as myself.” Ah, I can say it.
I say, “Have you ever kept the Great Commandment?” And if you’re honest about it, you realize that you haven’t kept the Great Commandment for five minutes in your life. That you’ve been breaking the Great Commandment steadily in the last five minutes. There’s nobody in this room, there’s nobody listening to my voice who has ever loved God with all of their mind.
Maybe we love God with part of our soul, with part of our strength. But we say: “Well, so what’s the big deal? Nobody loves God with all of their mind, heart, soul, and strength. Nobody loves everybody in the world as much as they love themselves. I mean, surely God isn’t going to take that too seriously. Certainly God must grade us on a curve, and relatively speaking, I’m doing al. right. It’s no big deal.” Wait a minute. If God calls this the Great Commandment, and if the Bible says that on this hangs all of the Law and the Prophets, then to violate it must be a grievous matter before God.
