There are only two things we can control in life, what we choose to believe and how we choose to behave.  That’s pretty much it.  Our obsession with trying to guarantee ourselves a certain outcome only betrays our stubborn and naïve pride, frustrates our relationships and fills our days with artery-clogging stress.  God only requires that we accept our responsibility where it lies, with what we believe and how we behave.  That’s what Jesus was driving at when he answered the Pharisees question, “‘which commandment in the law is the greatest?’” 

By this time, according to Jewish religious custom, the law had been expanded well beyond the Ten Commandments to include literally hundreds of others that were ridiculously complicated and impossible to keep.  For example, they had taken the 4^th commandment, “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy (Exodus 20:8),” and expanded it to include strict prohibitions against cooking on the sabbath.  Since the cooking process included warming water, it was against the law to warm water on the sabbath.  Therefore, if a person washed their hands on the sabbath and got too close to a fire before they dried their hands, the fire would warm the water on their hands and they would be guilty of failing to keep the sabbath holy.  These weren’t people who worried about beating the Methodists to Luby’s after church.  But, they were the same people who were asking Jesus, “‘which commandment in the law is the greatest?’”

Their question was meant to set Jesus up.  These were legalists, people who believed that we are made right with God by how many rules we keep.  To a legalist, a law is law.  If they could get Jesus to pick one law over any other as greater, then indirectly, they would get him to admit that some of God’s laws weren’t as important as others.  If they could do that, they could classify him as a blasphemer, a lawbreaker, and have legal grounds to get rid of him. 

But, Jesus had already seen them coming and answered their question by actually clarifying the true meaning of all of God’s laws for them.  His words not only sum up the full meaning of the Ten Commandments, they drive the only moral absolutes we really have to the center of the conversation.  Love God with all your being and your neighbor, too.  That’s it.  It’s an acid test for all areas of moral dilemma.  What is the most loving and just thing I can do in any given situation? 

This is, by the way, agape love.  Not just love that touches our emotions or draws out our most natural passions or love that only responds to hormonal stimulation.  This is agape love.  Agape love is self-sacrificial love, love that puts the call of God and the needs of others above all else and then plots a course of action accordingly.  These words of Jesus are also an incredible gift.  They give us a moral compass in a world increasingly confused about the difference between right and wrong, evil and good. 

In several conversations lately, I’ve noted increasing concern on the part of parents and grandparents about how many younger people are now choosing to live together before they marry.  It wasn’t long ago that living together outside of a marriage commitment was simply called fornication or adultery or shacking up.  Now, if it’s called anything, it’s called a more sophisticated “cohabitating” because it’s becoming a new cultural norm.  If people even try to justify it at all, they’ll often use the argument that two people need to get to know each other before marriage so they can know for sure they can live together in marriage.  In fact, statistics demonstrate that people who live together before marriage are far more likely to divorce than people who do not.  But, here is the question.

What happens if a shifting cultural norm becomes our moral compass?  Who are we to rewrite God-given standards for marriage as a commitment of faithful love between a man and a woman meant for life, not just a relationship of convenience until our passions lead us to do something else?  We live on a planet where north, south, east and west are fixed points of geography that have nothing to do with which way we choose to turn.  God has established the physical laws of this universe by which we are bound; he has also established the moral order of this universe, the laws of which we ignore only at great peril.  No one would disagree that a sniper who takes innocent lives has broken the laws of God’s moral order.  But, how far back from the black letter law that prohibits cold-blooded murder are we willing to draw the line on what laws of God’s moral order we will obey and which ones we will not?

Jerry Spivey and I played golf the other day and rode in golf carts with a global positioning satellite system.  No matter where we were at any time, a satellite in space sent a signal to our cart that told us exactly where we were on the course and how far we were from the hole.  It even told us how close we were to sand traps and water traps that might stall Jerry’s game.  Isn’t it also true that we need a positioning system based on God’s moral gravitational center that never changes so that we can always find our way if we get lost?

Jesus gave it to us.  “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  He went on to say, “‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’”  Jesus was saying that the love of God and love of our fellowman, love and justice, are the eye of the moral needle through which all other questions of morality must pass.  They never change.  All questions that plague us these days, questions about marital conduct, pre-marital conduct, abortion, gay rights, euthanasia, war and social justice issues, all of them, must pass the test of what Jesus said is the greatest commandment, to do the most loving and just thing in relationship to God and our fellowman. 

We still may not all come out at the same place on those issues, but if we call ourselves Jesus’ disciples, that’s where we’ll start.  Just like a GPS system is bound by the laws of God’s physical universe and can tell us exactly where we are on the planet at any moment, these words of Jesus are based on the laws of God’s moral order and can tell us where we are in relationship with him, and others.  Long before Jesus answered the Pharisees’ test, the prophet Micah said the same thing this way, “What is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)?”

Interesting question, don’t you think?  Not, what is bad?  But, “what is good?”  For far too long far too many of us who call ourselves Christians have defined faith in terms of believing in Jesus and not doing bad things, the definition of which keeps shifting according to continually redefined cultural norms.  The result is that we too often take false comfort, frankly, in reassuring ourselves that we are Christian because we believe the right things about Jesus even as our lives are following a course of morality that in no way has anything to do with his Lordship in our lives.  Jesus’ words lay the foundation for what the rest of the New Testament later affirms.  It is not ultimately possible to separate what we believe from how we behave. 

James said this way, “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves . . ..  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world . . ..  What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?  Can faith save you?  If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?  So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead (James 1:22, 27; 2:14-17).”

According to the New Testament, there is no way to distinguish loving God from loving each other.  And, loving God and each other does mean, as James said, keeping ourselves “unstained by the world.”  That means letting ourselves be guided by a holier moral compass than those who have not chosen the Lordship of Jesus as theirs.  That means righting what is wrong in the way we choose to live.  It means repenting of sin.  And, that is a never-ending process.

Recently, I was asked to help out at the concession stand at a football game.  I got to the stadium at 6:30 and they strapped a cash bag to my waist and told me to make change (they didn’t know I was a Baptist preacher).  I didn’t look up until 10:00, all the while handing out popcorn, cokes, hot dogs and chili cheese fries with one hand and making change with the other.  It was a feeding frenzy.  This one man told me what he wanted, handed me some money and then changed his order.  In the confusion of doing two sets of math, I short-changed him two bucks although I didn’t realize it until later.  All night, I kept looking for him, hoping he’d come back by so I could repay him.  He never did.  I can’t go back and give that guy what I owe him.  I may or may not ever see him again.  But, not being able to hand out chili cheese fries without thinking of a sermon, I found myself asking myself if I’m short-changing others.  Are there promises I’m not keeping, other rules I’m bending?  By what moral compass will I choose to live in relationship with others and are there points at which repentance of sin would be a good place to start in rebuilding a relationship with someone I’m responsible for loving?  “Unstained from the world,” James said.  But, there’s more.

Jesus’ words are proactive words.  Earlier he had told his disciples, “‘If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me (Matthew 16:24).’”  This is proactive love, agape love, self-sacrificial living.  What defines us as true disciples of Jesus is not just some decision we made to believe in Jesus when we were eight but that has absolutely no relevance to the way we conduct our lives now.  Jesus defined faith as how we behave, not just what we say we believe.  It’s legitimate to ask.  If we say that we believe in Jesus but are not living our lives guided by the moral compass of self-denial and following Jesus now, heart, soul and mind, are we truly his disciples? 

I caught just the tale end of the story the other day so I don’t know all the details.  But, at a recent Friday night high school football game, a young lady was crowned homecoming queen.  It tends to happen this time of year.  But, what doesn’t tend to happen is what that young lady did next.  Before the ceremony was over, she took the crown off of her head and, shocking everyone, placed it on the head of another young woman who had lost the election.  A young woman who had also lost her mother to cancer just a few days before.  The queen gave away her crown, she gave away her power, her prominence, her position to someone who needed it more.  That’s agape love.  Taking whatever is yours and expending it for the sake of others, empowering them, lifting them up.  That’s what Jesus did for us because he loved us.  That’s what he calls us to do, too. 

There are only two things in this life over which we have any control and they are all that God requires of us, what we believe and how we behave; we control nothing else.  We can’t control the economy, our health, guarantee ourselves a comfortable retirement or job security, we can’t control our families, our wives or husbands, our government or world affairs.  We can’t even guarantee the outcome of the course our church has chosen to restructure the way we do ministry.  We can’t guarantee this church’s future any more than we can our own.  We have no ultimate control over any of those. 

But, we do have control over what we choose to believe and how we choose to behave.  We can believe in Jesus enough to love him and extend his love to others.  When we can do nothing else, we can still love God, heart, soul and mind and our neighbors as ourselves. 

We can love.  That’s the only obligation we have, Jesus said.  We can love.