What's all this talk
of commandments?
Why is it that
the Lord Himself still speaks of
the Father issuing commands?
Even Jesus says,
“if ye love me,
keep my commandments.”
Can you really love someone
and command them?
[PAUSE]
The idea of commandment
is something
we struggle with today.
Ours is supposed
to be a world in which
we are free.
While we have
laws and rules
to keep society safe
and working well,
the idea of
being commanded
to do something makes us uneasy.
Commandment suggests
that our freedom
is being taken away,
and we are just a soldier,
to do and to die.
We hear
St Paul quite clearly say to us,
“Love does not insist
on its own way.”
That sort of suggests that
Love shouldn't command.
Love shouldn't tell us what to do.
A commandment
is really setting one person's
will over another’s.
If God is love
then how can God demand
His will be done and still love us?
[PAUSE]
You might say that
a parent tells
their child what to do.
They do this so that
the child learns to grow
and function well in society,
learn to behave well
and be kind to others.
That is the sort of commandment
we might be able to get behind.
God is our Father
and so He commands us
in order that
we might learn to live lives
that reflect His love for us in the world.
The word “commandment” is Latin
and it reflects the time
when orders were passed
from generals to captains
and then to sergeants by hand
on pieces of paper.
They were passed by hand
and that is what command means
– to pass an instruction on by hand.
That is not the same idea
that the Greek word has.
The Greek word for “command”
really talks about doing something
for a specific purpose.
It is the underlying purpose
that gives the commandment
its weight.
The Lord commands us
to love Him
and to love neighbour.
This is not just an arbitrary commandment.
There is a purpose behind it.
To love means
to want someone's perfection,
to want what's the very best for them.
To love God means
that we want his purposes
to be fulfilled in the world.
We pray,
“Thy Kingdom come,
Thy will be done.”
And what is God's will?
Nothing less than our perfection.
God loves us,
and this means
He wants us to be perfect in Him.
The command to love
is not arbitrary.
God could not
command anything else,
because to do so
He would cease to be God.
[PAUSE]
Of course,
some people will say
that it is obvious
that God does not love us.
They will point to times
when God commands
the Israelites
to kill the Canaanites, for example.
That does not sound very loving.
When you consider the evil
that the Canaanites are
bringing into the world,
killing children even babies
to sacrifice to their Gods
as well as a whole host
of really horrible, horrible things,
then you realise that
the only way that this terrible way of living
can be stopped is
if the Canaanites are removed.
So against God’s perfection are they
that they impose
their own ideals on others
unrepentantly
and it takes centuries
for this lack of repentance to be revealed.
But where is the love?
[PAUSE]
The Canaanites are not pursuing perfection
but its very opposite.
With their actions ended,
there is a greater chance
for everyone else to
seek perfection in God.
But God shows us,
consistently,
that Death is not a state but an event.
We do not know
how God deals with the Canaanites
after their death.
If the love that Jesus shows us
is evidence of how God is,
then it stands to reason that,
even after death,
the Canaanites are judged in love
and that they will lack no good
that they desire to receive.
God's commands
seem sometimes very obscure.
This is because
we cannot see
the purpose of what he wants.
We do not know His mind,
and this is why He calls us
to have faith.
Faith is about trusting in God
based on the evidence He shows us
in His Gospel
when we do not know
what He is doing.
[PAUSE]
God commands us to love,
and sometimes that is not easy.
However, by fulfilling
that command,
we approach God himself.
“If ye love me,
keep my commandments.”
The commandment is to love
and God is love,
so at all times
we are commanded
to live our lives with each other
in the loving arms of God.
There is no other commandment
greater than these.
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