They came to Jesus with two things on their minds. They sincerely wanted to know how He would answer their question; if in the process they could trip Him up, so much the better.

“Lord, which is the Greatest Commandment?”

Jesus replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength.” He was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5, a verse known, loved, and memorized by every faithful Jew.

“Good answer,” the questioner said, and began walking away.

“And the second one is a lot like it,” Jesus called after him.

Second one? Did anyone hear us asking the Lord what was the second greatest commandment? I didn’t, did you?

What’s going on here?

As the man turned back to the Lord, Jesus said, “The second commandment is: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” A far less familiar verse taken from Leviticus 19:18.

With this word, the Lord Jesus sent a message down through the centuries to His people of every generation: God will not allow us to turn the Christian faith into a vertical, me-and-Jesus-only kind of thing.

My relationship with Jesus Christ provides salvation. My relationship with other people proves my salvation.

Vertical, horizontal. The sign of the cross, the perfect symbol of the Christian faith.

The dual relationship which Jesus commands is taught all through Scripture.

“If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin” (I John 1:7).

“Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness” (I John 2:9).

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whover loves God must also love his brother” (I John 4:20-21).

Pretty clear. It reminds us of something the Lord said in the Upper Room just hours before His arrest, trial and crucifixion.

“A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, you must love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

All right. Everyone clear on this?

Salvation is a matter of repenting of our sin and putting faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Thereafter, we will want to work on deepening that relationship. This involves learning His teachings and obeying them, spending time each day in the basic Christian disciplines of prayer and study and meditation.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Salvation is lived out among people, not in the remote desert somewhere. Jesus commands us to be salt and light in this world (Matthew 5:13-14). We are to let the light of our newfound faith shine before people in such a way that they will want what the Lord has to offer (Matthew 5:16).

But we don’t like it that way.

Something about the perverse nature of the human heart insists that we can violate this order and separate the two.

Some want their Christian faith to be a private thing between themselves and the Lord with no one else involved.

“Me and Jesus Got Our Own Thing Going” was the offensive title of a country gospel song from my childhood. A step above this was the one titled “Jesus and Me.” Slightly above that one came “My God and I.”

These are half-truths. It is absolutely essential that each of us have a relationship of love and devotion to Jesus Christ. But we cannot leave others out of the picture. The Christian faith is not a private thing.

History is saturated with stories of powerful men and women who gave eloquent testimony to their faith in Jesus while owning slums, running industries with horrible working conditions, and treating their employees like slaves. In fact, some actually did own slaves.

Did they see no contradiction in the way they treated their brother and the faith in Jesus Christ they professed?

Sinful man has a fine ability to compartmentalize his beliefs. Into this box goes his faith in Jesus, into that pigeonhole goes his treatment of his employees, and never the twain shall meet.

Then, there are those who see the Christian faith as the opposite, as being all about “loving my neighbor” and little if anything about a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

“After all,” they insist, “all religions are about love. What Jesus wanted was for us all to love each other.”

The liberal wing of the Christian church is more likely to buy into this heresy. The fundamentalist wing is more likely to go for the “Jesus-and-me-only” fallacy.

Both are perversions of the Lord’s teachings.

Love Jesus Christ; love your neighbor as yourself.

That couplet sums it up.

Now, the question becomes, what does it mean to love Jesus and what does it mean to love others?

This is the “so what?” of the sermon. (Every sermon is composed of two parts: what? and so what? The first is the theology, the doctrine, and the second gives the application. Neither is complete without the other.)

What does it mean to love Jesus? Maybe to feel a strong affection toward Him, to get all goose-bumpy even thinking of Him? Nope. Not even close.

Let Him answer the question for Himself.

The following statements are all from Jesus’ Upper Room Discourse, His final words to the disciples before heading out for Gethsemane and His rendezvous with destiny, so to speak:

“If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15).

“Whoever has my commandments and obeys them, he is the one who loves me” (John 14:21).

“If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching” (John 14:23).

“He who does not love me does not obey my teaching” (John 14:24).

“If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love” (John 15:10).

“You are my friends if you do what I command” (John 15:14).

After six statements of the same point–to love Jesus means to obey Him!–it should be pretty clear what it means to love Jesus.

A half-century ago, Frederick Speakman wrote a book by the title of one of the sermons inside: “Love is Something You Do.” I bought the book for its title. That principle is one of the great assertions of Scripture.

Christians are to cease thinking of love the way the world does, as a sentimentality which we fall into and fall out of. Love is an action. If we love someone, we are to do loving things for them.

What kind of loving things? With Jesus, we are to obey Him. Nothing else–no amount of prayers or offerings or self-mutilations–are acceptable as substitutes. It’s obedience or nothing.

Paul said, “For this purpose I wrote to you that I might know the proof of you, whether you are obedient in all things” (II Corinthians 2:9).

That’s how we are to love Jesus. But how are we to love one another? What actions will that call for?

In Luke 6:27ff where the Lord instructs His disciples to love their enemies, He specifically calls for four actions: do good to them, bless them, pray for them, and give to them.

I call these the four most basic acts of love.

We do these four actions all the time to everyone we are in a loving relationship with (children, sweethearts, spouses, siblings, parents, grandchildren). We do good things for them, we bless them with our words, we pray Heaven’s blessings upon them, and we give to them.

Now, in the case of people we are in loving relationships with, we do far more than these four. We may hug them, kiss them, hold hands, go for long walks together, and sweet-talk each other.

We are not required, however, to do any of those things for our enemies or our neighbors. For them, we are to do good, bless, pray, and give.

The four most basic acts of love.

The fascinating thing about this is that when we do those acts of love, regardless of how we are personally feeling about it, the emotion of love often follows. We find ourselves deeply caring about the person we’ve been treating with love.

Once again, the world intrudes here to stop this in its tracks.

We learn from the world around us that “if I’m not feeling it, it’s hypocritical.” Ever heard that? I have. In fact, I’ve probably said it.

I can recall forcing myself to drive across town to visit some disgruntled church member who had been brutalizing me with his/her slanderous attacks. And now, they’ve had a death in the family or some other serious problem, and they need a pastor. Ministering to them as a pastor was the hardest thing I ever did. But I ordered myself to get in the car, drive to their house and walk inside.

Invariably, on the way home, I was elated. The joy was so thick, so solid, you could have sacked it up and weighed it on the scales.

Feelings are irrelevant. In fact, they are often our worst enemy.

We will do ourselves an immense favor the day we rescue our spiritual lives from bondage to our emotions.

Feelings are nice. We all enjoy the sensation of feeling loved and feeling happy. No one likes to feel bad.

But those emotions are fickle and have led many astray. We must be the master of our emotions, and that means making ourselves do the right thing regardless of how we feel about it.

Ever stir in the bed on a Monday morning and say, “I don’t feel like going to school today!” or “I just don’t feel like going to work”? We’ve all done that. And what did we do? We got out of bed, got dressed, and went on. An hour after we arrived, we were doing just fine.

We make ourselves do the right thing. That’s what maturity does. Immaturity stays in the bed and sleeps through class and loses that job.

One final word.

Most Christians I know believe it’s important to cultivate the relationship with Jesus through prayer, worship, Bible study, and such.

Let’s not forget to cultivate the relationship with our brothers and sisters in the church. This will involve studying together, praying together, playing and working alongside each other. And sometimes it involves just hanging out.

For the pharisaical nature of some of us, this will seem like so much time wasted. But we must learn to rebuke that sinful, carnal voice within us that would cut us off from the people we are commanded to love the most.

This is not an option. We are under orders.