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Three Simple Steps to Living a Christian Life
Simple but not easy.
Thousands of books, some with a thousand plus pages each, have been written about what it means to live a Christian life. Surely it can’t be that hard. Aren’t the instructions for living a Christian life contained in the teachings of Jesus which appear in four fairly short books of the Bible?
I suppose academics and theologians feel compelled to argue the minutia and parse the meanings of Jesus’ words. But with all due respect to the authors of those learned tomes, I believe it can all be summed up in three simple ideas.
Love others as yourself.
In the twenty second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is. Jesus responds by saying that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. And the second greatest is like the first, to love others as yourself. If you obey those two commandments then you will satisfy all the laws and commandments of the prophets.
Two things jump out at me about that passage. The first is that Jesus was only asked for the greatest commandment. But he felt so strongly about the second commandment that he gave it too. He even said that the second one was “like” the first. It’s as if there is commandment 1 and commandment 1b.
