The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others

I’m getting ready for our next series Transformed and one of the books I read was Scot McKnight’s The Jesus Creed.

This book breaks down Jesus’ teaching on the greatest commandment. I love the first part of the book as it talked about what it would have meant for Jesus to “change” the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4 – 9) by adding Leviticus 19:18.

The main idea of the book is taking what Jesus said is the greatest commandment and looking at that as what Jesus expects a disciple to be. This is something that I think many Christians struggle with, they just want to know what God expects from them. If you’re there, this is a great book to check out.

Here are a few things that jumped out:

• One loves God by following Jesus.
• The Jesus Creed works like this:  Because God loves us, because he knows what is best for us and wants what is best for us, he invites us to find that “what is best” by loving him back.
• “In making a commitment of love to another we surrender our freedom and we surrender our individuality.” – Lewis Smedes
• The essence of what God asks of us, then what he asks of us is to love him and to love others. Sin is any action that violates that love. Repentance is what happens when we realize in our deepest selves that we have violated the sacred trust of love with Abba and seek to renew our commitment.
• Because our society has elevated tolerance to the highest of virtues, our society remains confused about what “love” means. Christians are not called to tolerance; Christians are called to love. Toleration condescends; love honors.
• The goal of a disciple of Jesus is relationship, not perfection.
• A disciple is called to love God and to love others, and this means:  trust completely, abide constantly, and surrender totally.
• “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” – C.S. Lewis