Since Jesus was there at creation, he came first. However, when practical Paul is laying out his arguments regarding resurrection, he throws in a little tidbit about Adam (the natural man) coming first, followed by Jesus (the spiritual man). He takes this a step further to describe our existence - we first live in a natural state, then we die and live again in a spiritual state. Paul argues that this is the 'natural' order of things - natural comes first and spiritual follows. He is talking about timing, not importance.
When Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he says that it is to Love God - a very spiritual thing. But he won't let that stand alone. He couples it with the command to Love People - a very natural thing. Because of the order in which Jesus gives the commands, we often think that is the order in which they occur. But, Jesus gives no indication of this. He is talking about importance, not timing.
If we look at the two together, it seems that in terms of timing, loving people would come before loving God.
So, why do we act otherwise?
We expect people to come to church (at best a rudimentary correlation to loving God) before we introduce them to the love of people.
We yearn to love God more and better in our lives, while neglecting to love those people around us.
We expect people to love God with their behavior without ever showing them the benefit of loving others with their behavior.
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As always you're making me think. I do so enjoy reading you blog. I agree that we have to love people first. I think we have to learn to love and how can we do that without people?
ReplyDeleteThanks for always making me think. :)