Have you ever wondered why it is that, while Jesus reduced all the commandments down to two — love God and love your neighbor — he seems to have gone even further in revealing through the apostle Paul that the second commandment actually takes in the first?
Here’s what we read in
Romans 13:8-10 (GW) — 8 “Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet,” (and if there is any other commandment) are summed up in this, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
The explanation for this two-in-one commandment may be as simple as this: 1 John 4:20 — “If anyone says "I love God" and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar, because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
In other words, to love the Lord with our whole person is to be what he loves — a self-giving, self-sacrificially helpful person. It is only when everything within us is moving in that direction that we have justifiable reason to believe that we are loving God. Hence, it appears that the first commandment is fulfilled insofar as we are acting on the second one.
