Simple Obedience Part 2

In Part One, we looked at the 2 great commandments and the great commission and summed them up as: Love God, Love People, and Make Disciples. We made the point that from what Jesus said in both cases (you can read it all in Matthew 22:34-40 and Matthew 28: 18-20) it seems that the first 2 summarize the fulfilment of the Old Testament and that the 3rd sums up the New Testament. The most simple way that the requirements of obedience, that are expected of God's people in our present day, can be listed is : Love God, Love People, and Make Disciples.

In coming blogposts, I plan to share some more thoughts about why this is so and ask some practical questions on how we can use this simple idea in our lives, but in this short posting, I just want to make 1 point.

The point is: 1 comes before 2 and 2 comes before 3.

Or to say it a different way, you can't really make disciples of people for the Lord if you don't love those people.....and you can't love those or any people if you don't love God!

Love for God is first in our priority, our list, our strategy, our relationships with others, and our mission. We can't really love others in a Godly way if we don't Love God and on the other hand, we don't love God, if we don't love others. (I John 4:20-21...in fact the whole book of I John is a commentary on this whole concept).

So what does it mean to Love God...Love People...and Make Disciples?
More next time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

7 Stages of a Disciple Making Movement

In this blog post, I want to introduce the reader to the 7 stages of a developing disciple making movement. Then in my next teaching post on this blog, I want to specifically focus on 1 of the stages that seems to be challenging to many practitioners of the dmm/cpm strategy.   These 7 stages are broad categories that encapsulate several of the Critical Elements of disciple making movements. If you check out several of my older posts from several years ago (especially from the first year of the blog 2008) you will find several blogposts that describe what we call Critical Elements.  (This series of blogposts from 2008 are entitled  "The Critical Elements","Critical Elements of a Church Planting Movement", "Passionate Extraordinary Prayer", "Authority of Scripture and Obedience", "Rain and the Holy Spirit", "Miracles", "The 1:8 Factor", "The Strategic Critical Elements", and finally "The Discipleship E
Read more

The Holy Spirit and Disciple Making Movements

Recently at the Disciple Making Movement leadership meeting in California, one of the main topics that we focused on was the Role of the Holy Spirit.  A key leader from West Africa led the discussion of this topic.  I remember being especially challenged by this study and by interactions with this leader.  He is a special friend who I have known since 2006, and his influence has touched me greatly.  In the last few weeks since the meeting, I have reflected, prayed, and begun to seek the influence of the Holy Spirit more than I had been doing in recent years.  Now I want to share some reflections on the role of the Holy Spirit in Disciple Making Movements (which may or may not reflect the discussions we had in California).  Regardless of where one stands theologically, it cannot be denied that those who focus attention on the Holy Spirit's activity have seen the launching of some of the largest "Movements" in the history of the Church.  Think of the Pentecostal/Charism
Read more

Non-Cessationist Sola Scriptura: The Theology of CPM

I believe in a theological position that I call Non-Cessationist Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura refers to the Reformation doctrine that means "Scripture Alone" and that asserts that the Bible alone, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, are the only inspired Word of God and that they are the sole authority for God's people, flawlessly communicating God's will to mankind. The "Sola" or "Only" part asserts that nothing else does this or has this authority....Not Tradition, Magisterium, Hierarchy, Leaders, or Experiences from whatever source....ONLY SCRIPTURE! Non-Cessationist refers to the concept that God still is active in the world and in the lives of people today in overtly supernatural ways. It says that no activity of God, described in the Bible, has ceased just because that the Bible is now complete. It asserts that all of the gifts, operations, and manifestations of the Holy Spirit described in the Bible may continue to happen to the en
Read more