Matthew 22:36-40
Two Greatest Commandments
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 6:5-15
The LORD's Prayer
5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Titus 3:4-7
The Kindness and Mercy of God
4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
When Jesus told us to love God and to love neighbor He has forever linked God and man...His followers are the brothers of all mankind...We are all neighbors...So as Jesus went around forgiving other men and help in their sufferings, we should do the same...The Kindness an LOVE of God is shown in His sending His Son to be our Savior...God has shown us Great Mercy...He wants us to be like His Son...So in the LORD's Prayer, He tells us to forgive other people when they sin against us, just as our heavenly Father will also forgive us...But if we do not forgive others of their sins against us, our Father will not forgive our sins...These statements in the LORD's Prayer shows us that He wants us to be like Him...
Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Christ took upon Himself this human form of ours...He became Man even as we are men...In His Humanity and His lowliness we recognize our own form...He has become like a man, so that men should be like Him...And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God...Henceforth, any attack on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in His own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form...Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate LORD, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race...By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which He bore...We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others...The incarnate LORD makes His followers the brothers of all mankind...The “philanthropy” of God (Titus 3:4) revealed in the Incarnation is the ground of Christian love towards all on earth that bears the name of man...The form of Christ incarnate makes the Church into the Body of Christ...All the sorrows of mankind fall upon that form, and only through that form can they be borne.”...