Sermon: The Two Great Commandments: First Principles

Two Becoming One
#1635
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 22-Jan-22; 81 minutes

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Just about every place in the media seems to go on and on about transgenderism these days and in response, we in the church of God have spoken about it now and again in sermons and in commentaries, and written about it in Forerunner articles and CGG weekly essays. But the fact remains that as much as we have spoken out against it, the sexual revolution has now reached the point where we question the very biology of our bodies and a small percentage has concluded that gender resides in the mind rather than in the anatomy they were born with, and some of them take the drastic step of going on to change, through drugs and hormones and surgery, their parts that do not conform to their self-image.

You have probably all heard about the University of Pennsylvania swimmer, Lia Thomas born William Thomas, who has been smashing women's swimming records, some by many full seconds rather than the tens or the hundredths of seconds that records usually fall after somebody does something wonderful. Thomas competed for three years as a man. He was just a midrange college swimmer at the time. Then, in 2019, he decided that he would conform to the NCAA rules and take a year off so that he could go through the mandatory year of testosterone suppression treatment so that he could perform in his next season as a woman.

But even with these drugs, Thomas still, after now two years, has a man's body, a man's strength, a man's lung capacity, and actual women swimmers have virtually no chance whatsoever when they compete against him. (I will say him because he really is a him, no matter what has happened.) His time in the 500 meter freestyle (remember he was just a middling men's swimmer), is just seconds slower than seven time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky's NCAA record set in 2017. She is a phenom. She moves very fast through the water. She is the Michael Phelps of the women's side of American swimming. He, a middling man racer, can almost beat her—the best.

Nicole Russell writes in The Daily Signal, "Even if Thomas has taken testosterone suppression treatments for a year prior, his race times still show a clear physiological advantage." Katherine Deves, who is cofounder of Save Women's Sports Australasia, quipped on Twitter, "Man breaks women's college swimming records. Shocks no one."

Some courageous women athletes are speaking out about the quite apparent unfairness of women having to compete against biological males. Idaho State University athlete Madison Kenyon wrote an article just a couple of weeks ago, January 11th, 2022, titled "Women Can Beat the Odds, But We Can't Beat Biology." She writes,

I know how frustrating this is. I've been competing for the last three years as a track and field athlete at Idaho State University where five times I've lost competitions to a male who chose to identify as a woman. As an athlete and a biology major I find it fascinating that the same sports authorities who would think it crazy to put a heavyweight boxer in the ring with a flyweight just because the first guy identifies as a fly away this week, think it's perfectly natural to put a male on the running track or soccer field next to a woman and declare that fair. Women can beat exhaustion, frustration, even a tough team. We can beat the clock, we can beat some pretty tough odds. But in the end, we can't beat biology or officials more concerned with pleasing the Wokes than respecting our needs and identities.

What has happened over the past 70 years is that the progressive left has redefined the words sex and gender, mostly the word gender, however. It used to be not that long ago that sex, the word sex, referred to the objective male, female, or binary aspect of human biology, whereas gender was a grammatical term for the sorting of words into masculine, feminine, and neuter categories. That was only about 70 years ago. Gender was not even associated with the human body, with the human mind. It was only a grammatical term. However, since about 1950 or so gender has increasingly been redefined as "a person's self-representation as male or female or how that person is responded to by social institutions on the individual's gender presentation." What I just said there was the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's definition of gender.

So it is all subjective there. It is either how a person sees himself or herself or how he presents himself and therefore society recognizes him or her as whatever it is that he or she is trying to represent.

The distinction here is that sex, now, refers to the biological distinction and gender is a social construct. That is how society views an individual or a personal psychological identification. Now you go on certain websites, they will ask you how you identify when you are signing up. Some of them (I think it is Reddit) has over 100 ways that you can identify yourself. And I have seen them go as high as like 216 or 260 something different ways to identify. That is way past the binary male and female. I do not understand the distinctions. I have actually seen a list where they show what these distinctions are and it is like: you identify as a fish? It is just weird. I mean, that seems ridiculous. But there are people who have those weird identities in their head. You have to think that something strange is working with them. But the word gender has come a long way from being a purely grammatical distinction of nouns.

Now, such a ridiculous change could only happen in a godless society. It took about 100 years or so after Darwin's godless theory of evolution for social progressives, Western progressives, and the intellectuals to do away, in their own minds, with the created order of human sexuality, an order that had dominated all civilization all around the world since Adam and Eve, since creation, certainly since the Flood. But that is where we are today. Our society has gone from the Christian ideal of a binary society, male and female, to this crazy, complex, incomprehensible, impossible-to-understand, different things that people identify themselves as.

Let us go to Genesis 1. I just want to nail down the original teaching here from God Himself at creation. Out of the mouth of God Himself as He is making humankind. He tells us how He made us.

Genesis 1:26-28 Then God said, "Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him [this is the third time he mentions that]; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Here we have the definitive biblical statement that God made man male and female. This is repeated several times throughout Scripture. We will go to one in in a few minutes. But it is very clear, it is unambiguous, and it is also (you do not even have to read between the lines very much), you are insulting God if you go beyond the male and the female because He made us in His image. This is the way that He wanted humans to live their lives—according to their anatomical designation as male or female. I could go further than anatomical and say genetic. Every cell in the body has an identity, either male or female.

Let us go one more chapter forward and add a very important principle to this: Why there is male and female.

Genesis 2:18-19 And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them.

This is very interesting in terms of people identifying as other things like fish or cattle or red fox or something. God did this purposely, bringing the animals before Adam so he could see that there was not anything else out there that was like him.

Genesis 2:19-20 And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. [So it worked for that as well.] So Adam gave names to all the cattle, birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

She had not been created yet. Here Adam was, a lone male among humanity. And all these animals were out there and nothing was like him. I am sure God even brought orangutans and gorillas and other monkeys, primates, and Adam could see that none of these were really like him either, even though they walked perhaps on their two legs and had opposable thumbs and all those things. They were still not human.

Genesis 2:21-23 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He [God] took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh [He is saying in the Hebraistic way here, "This person is just like me!" as opposed to all of those others that had been paraded before him who were not at all like him. Then he goes on]; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man [or she shall be called Isha because she was taking out of Ish, in the Hebrew man/woman]."

They were the same. All he did was give her the female particle there "a" so that it would be noticeable that they were of the same kind. One was just a man. The other one was a woman. They were very much alike. And even in the English man and woman has a very similar relationship. Woman simply means "a man with a womb." They both contain the word man because they are both of that kind. There is just the sexual difference between them.

Verse 24 is very important. This is Moses' commentary on what had just happened. He is giving us a conclusion because these two, a man and a woman, are alike but different. They are both mankind. They are both human, but they are of the two different sexes.

Genesis 2:24-25 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

What that tells us in verse 25 is that in that environment, in the Garden of Eden, that arrangement was great. Before sin had come in that was the model. That was the way it should be. One man and one woman joining together to be one.

What we have seen here in these two passages is that God's distinction between the sexes is binary. There are two. One of each sex is necessary for procreation. You cannot have two men or two women. There has to be just one man and one woman. That is how it works. The two sides of humanity are to come together as couples, as one in marriage. Not just for reproduction. That is only the most basic reason for the one flesh of the two, but also to accomplish higher, more spiritual goals. And they go from having a conducive family environment to preparing for eternal life. When a man and a woman come together as one flesh and they create the best environment, they can use that environment then for spiritual growth.

Now, in his Companion Bible, E. W. Bullinger has an appendix (it is number 10), on the significance of numbers in Scripture. I believe he later had a whole book that he explained all the numbers in Scripture. But I got this one from the Companion Bible itself. He concludes that the number two signifies difference. We have already seen that. There were two sides of humanity, a male side and a female side, and if you cannot see the difference, you are as blind as a bat because there is very much difference between men and women. They are very much the same in many ways too but the differences are enough to be very distinctive.

So two means different, difference. But if two become one, which chapter 2, verse 24 encourages, then they are no longer binary but unitary. They are one, the two have become one, and in that unity that is created because they have come together, in that unity they can foster progress towards a goal. Let us just think of this in in general terms. Let us say you have a bunch of people and you have a goal, you want to build a house. What you want to do is get all the people on the same page, you want them to be reading from the same blueprint so that when it is time to construct the house, it all goes according to plan.

But if you have one wanting to do a one bedroom apartment and another one wanting to do a three bedroom ranch and another one wanting to have an uptown loft and another one wanting a castle or you know, just to name all these things, there is no unity there. You are not going to get the house built.

So God has made it very simple. One man, one woman, one goal, ultimately the Kingdom of God. Put these two together, give them the same blueprints, encourage the unity between them, unity of mind, and you are far more likely to reach the goal under that than having no union or a divided union, some sort of separation or divorce.

Right here in Genesis 2, already (we could even take it back to Genesis 1, but it does not come out quite as clearly there), but definitely by the end of chapter 2, we have a vital principle in Scripture brought to the fore. And actually it began before that. It is not in Genesis necessarily that we find this out, but we find it out later in the book of John. In the real beginning that is there in the first chapter because this "two becoming one" started with the One who is called the Father and the other who is now called the Son. They are two entities, two people, two Beings, but They are one in mind and They have a great purpose that They are trying to work out. And because of their unity, even though They are two different Beings, Their unity is so close that They are now well on Their way towards bringing that purpose to pass because of the two of Them.

They are two who are one. They are unified and in their unity, They are working out a grand purpose and plan.

Let us go to John 17 to just tack this down. This is toward the end of Jesus' prayer before He was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane.

John 17:20-23 [He says] "I do not pray for these alone [meaning His disciples], but also for those who will believe in Me through their word [Now, He is bringing us into it. And what is the reason for His prayer?]; that they all may be one [He is working toward the unity of all those who are called.], as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You [see, He wants others, those whom He is calling, to share the oneness that He has with the Father]; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one [He is saying, "I don't want them just to be one with Us. I want them to be one with each other and then all of those other people and all of us will be all be one together.]: I in them, and you in Me; that they may be made perfect [hang on to that] in one, that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me."

We are seeing here, as we bring these scriptures together, that binary is good. But when binary becomes unitary, it is much better, especially if everybody agrees on the goal and we are all working toward it. Remember, He did say in Genesis 1 that everything He made was "very good." So the binary parts of the human anatomy, the human being, it is fine, it is great. It works for good things. But ultimately binary is supposed to become unity, unitary. He wants the two to become one physically, spiritually, and ultimately with Him and the Father in the Kingdom. Where everything is being funneled toward unity with Him, with everyone, so that we are all on the same page. We are all reading from the same blueprint. That is the goal.

So, today we will eventually consider two foundational principles that we must join together in our lives under this purpose. And if we can do that we will begin to make real progress towards spiritual maturity, thus eternal life, and the Kingdom of God beyond that. But before we get to that, we need to chase out this two becoming one idea just a bit more so we have it in a fuller way.

Let us go to Matthew 19. This is a section of Jesus having a bit of an argument with the Pharisees on the subject of marriage. They asked Him a question and He totally confounds them, which is the way it usually works out. But we are going to just read verses 3-6 here so that we get a few things out of this before we go on to the next step.

Matthew 19:3-6 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?" And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read [Remember, He is talking to Pharisees here who had their noses in the Bible all the time, supposedly. They were supposed to have known just about everything about the Old Testament.] that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? [Have you not heard those principles before, guys?] So then [He says, a conclusion here], they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."

We know if we go down a few verses here, He says, except for adultery you should not get divorced.

Let us think about this. This is the principle of one flesh from Genesis 2 being brought into the New Testament. It is the first time this is broached here in the New Testament. Now, it is not hard to see that Jesus here is intimating that it applies beyond marriage. He is looking at a greater principle, not just answering the simple question about divorce. He is talking about marriage and beyond marriage, into more deeper spiritual things, which He does not get into. But He says, essentially, "At the beginning when these principles were first given, they were the right ones." He tells them a little bit later, "Moses gave you the opportunity to divorce because you were too carnal to understand the more spiritual meanings behind this idea of two becoming one flesh." But He said, still with their knowledge of the Old Testament, they should have some grasp of this. But they did not. They had a problem.

Now, they could have gone to one of the most recent writings. Let us go back there to Malachi chapter 2 to see what God's understanding about divorce was.

Malachi 2:16 "For the Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce. . . .

Think about that. He hates divorce. Why? Because it is going against the two become one principle. It splits the two up again. He had gone to such pains to make them one and now they are splitting up and becoming two again. It is going opposite, or against, the principle. Now notice what he says about it though. He hates divorce. Why?

Malachi 2:16 . . . For it covers one's garment with violence," says the Lord of hosts. "Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously."

Very interesting terms here that he uses for why He hates divorce so much. This was the same God that they were asking the question of in Matthew the 19th chapter and Jesus is giving them an answer that skips actually back over what Malachi says, goes all the way back to the beginning and says, "There is no contemplation of divorce in Genesis 1 and 2. It is the other way around, the two become one. They adhere to one another, they cleave to one another, and they become one. Not one becomes two. That's wrong."

So he says that it is violence, that it is treachery. He intimates here that it is a deficiency in one's spirit, or one could say one's spiritual life. It is a problem with your belief. And in verse 8, He emphasizes that from the beginning God frowned on divorce. That is disunion. Now, why? Because, I have already mentioned this, it defies or does violence to His purpose. His purpose is to bring many to one. Divorce takes one and splits it up into two. And as we know, divorce does not just impact the two parties. It also impacts any children, relationships in the family, and on and on it goes. It spreads out.

Divorce actually does not just take the one couple and split it up into two. It actually splits up a lot of other relationships too, causes damage, violence, to those relationships. Divorce halts the work of two becoming one. In other words, divorce undermines His purpose of bringing everyone into one. It throws a monkey wrench into the machine.

So an original principle of godliness is this idea of two becoming one. It is the binary, as I have said before, becoming unitary. Now, I am using these words "two becoming one" as the same as binary becoming unitary, but that is what He is looking for. He is looking for one unit that is made up of Him and His sons and all His Family. One family unit, that is His goal.

Let us go to Ephesians 5. This is what we know as the marriage chapter and the apostle Paul uses this principle. This is after wives and husbands are first addressed, but he is still on the husbands here.

Ephesians 5:28-32 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. [tuck that away too] For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. [Is that not interesting?] For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. [Interesting. He quotes Genesis 2:24 in this passage. Verse 32 is the one that we are aiming for here.] This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Remember I said that in giving this principle, he was looking further than just a man and a wife coming together in marriage. Paul says here, echoing what Jesus said in Matthew 19, that this principle goes all the way back to Genesis 2:24 and it has to do ultimately with the union between Christ and the church. So, by calling it a mystery here, he means it is a secret, it is hidden knowledge, a concealed principle, that is revealed only to those who are initiated into the knowledge of whatever this is. And for us, mysteries are revealed through the Holy Spirit. The elect have their mind opened to these mysteries by the Spirit.

So, we can understand it, others cannot even perceive it or understand it at all. They may be able to see that Paul says that "This is a great mystery, I speak concerning Christ and the church," but they really cannot comprehend, without the Holy Spirit, what God is actually saying here, what He is getting at. It is very deep, it is among the deep things of God.

But even though he says it is a mystery, Paul explicitly says that this two become one flesh idea is a type or a metaphor or a physical representation of the spiritual union between Christ and the church. Later on, in Revelation especially, we see that this is brought out as Christ being the bridegroom and the church being the bride. (Obviously that is in Matthew 25 as well and other places.) But in those places it is pretty clear that what he is talking about is a real marriage, a real coming together as one.

Let us consider how this works, this marriage between Christ and the church. Consider it. Christ is an immortal, sinless Being of infinite power, intelligence, and goodness. There is no black mark on Him at all. There is nothing, no sin, no impurity, no deficiency in any way in Him. Let us look at the other side of the ledger, you and me, the elect. The church is made up of just the opposite: sinful physical beings limited in every way. One is heavenly, that is, Christ. All the rest of us are earthly. One is wisdom personified. The elect are foolish. One is holy, pure. The other, the elect, is sinful. One embodies love. The other embodies selfishness.

We could go on and on getting these opposites of God versus human. And it would seem impossible that these two very polar opposites, very different people, or categories of people, could ever get together, can ever be put together. Yet it will happen. We have the promise of God. And it is already going on, it has already started. Now, it is mostly because of God's grace and mercy that He condescends to us, that He calls us, He gives us His Spirit, so that we can believe. He does all the major heavy lifting.

But we cannot neglect another essential factor which I would like to show you in Philippians 2. This is the essential factor from our side.

Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

So what is this essential point? It is the cooperative nature of the covenantal relationship between God and His people. It is set out in a contract. God will do this. I will do 99.9% of the work to make sure that you are in My Kingdom and one with My Son. I will sign My name to it. You have to sign too. But your part is to cooperate—obey, work. That is all you have to do. I will do the rest.

Not easy. God would never say that this is easy. And I think having gone through it for a number of years, we would say that it is not easy. But if the two are to become one, we have to fulfill our part of the contract which we have signed. We vowed to keep it. We have gone into the waters of baptism and we are committed. God will do most of it but we have to do some.

So, Jesus Christ being the focal point of this whole arrangement, is both God and man. He spent 33.5 years in the flesh and all the rest of time immemorial as God. So He knows what it is like for us and because of that qualification, as well as the fact that He gave Himself for us, shed His blood for the remission of our sins, and all the other things that He did that are already finished works, now He makes it possible through the resurrection from the dead for others to experience the same process to glorification. So it is through unity of purpose and faithful cooperation that the two very different things can become one.

Like I said, not easy, lots of bumps going down the road on our side, smooth sailing for God because He does everything right. But for us, we have a lot of trouble cooperating. But in a way that makes things—do not take this the wrong way—controllable for us. Because in a way we are in the driver's seat in terms of our eternal life. God is going to do everything. And if we just cooperate with Him, we are going to get to the goal.

Now if you have problems with control, if you are out of control, if you do not have self-mastery, you are going to find the way to the Kingdom of God to be difficult, very difficult, because you are going to put yourself in lots of trials. But if we faithfully obey and cooperate with God, submit to His way of life, then things are going to go a lot smoother. So in that sense we have a good measure of control. Because God is on our side one hundred percent. He is going to give us everything we need. He is going to give us the strength to help us get through. If we just cooperate with Him, if we humbly seek Him, if we give our lives over to Him. So we can do it, we can do our part in coming together, two very different situations, into one with Christ.

So, the two-in-one principle is a marrying (pardon the pun) of two very different things into a unified whole. This is very much the general principle. Or as I have said before, it is the binary becoming unitary—two becoming one.

That is the takeaway so far. We are halfway through the sermon. But there are several of these that fit with this overall principle in the Bible that are not necessarily linked directly to the two becoming one in God's Kingdom. But this is the principle that we can see in, for instance, Judah and Israel are two nations. Prophetically they are looked at as two, but in Ezekiel 37 it says the stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph will be bound together so that the people of Israel will come under one God and one King, under Christ and under David. So He is working that out separately. It is all part of the grand overall plan, but it is not directly tied in with us in terms of the elect marrying Christ as the bride.

Another one that happened in the New Testament is that Israelites and Gentiles are made one in the church, that there is no distinction. The middle wall has been taken down and so Jews, Israelites, Gentiles, wherever you have may have come from, you are all welcome in the church together and you are supposed to be one, part of one body. You see that in Ephesians 2:11-22.

You remember back in Genesis 38. Judah had two sons, Perez and Zerah. And the prophecy is that that line, which was two from that point, they were twins, would become one, joined together again and the breach, as it is called there, would be healed.

How about Old Testament and New Testament? Two halves, and they are not really halves, one is two-thirds, another one is one third, but those are one Book, one body of Scripture. You cannot understand either part without the other. God's work with Israel and God's work with the church are to be put together to make one law, one story. Even though we still divide it as Old Testament, New Testament, for whatever purposes. But God has this way of taking divergent things and making them one through His Spirit for His purposes.

Like I said, these are all over, we can look for other ones at another time perhaps, but it is good to understand this overriding principle that God is looking to make a unified whole from disparate pieces.

Let us go to Matthew 22, verses 34-40. Now we are getting to the gist of what I was thinking about when I originally came up with this idea for this sermon. If you know your sections of Scripture, your passages, you would know this is the two Great Commandments section. Here we have the scribes, the lawyers, trying to trip Jesus up and in verse 34 it says,

Matthew 22:34-36 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, what is the great commandment of the law?"

Notice the number there. What is the great commandment of the law? It is a singular article. It means one. This lawyer was asking Jesus Christ to give them one law that was the greatest of all. What did He do? He gave them two.

Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

So this Pharisee, the scribe, the lawyer, asked for one and Jesus answers with two. This is the New Testament introduction, at least in terms of explicit teaching, of this two-part command. They are obviously both in the Old Testament. These are quotations from Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. It is definitely the first time that there given to us, or set side-by-side as a package. Even in the Old Testament, they are not a package. Like I said, one is in Deuteronomy, one is in Leviticus. They are separated by the book of Numbers there so they are not found in the same place.

But Jesus puts them right here in this one saying side-by-side and He is saying that they are like one another. He could not give them just one. He had to give them two because there was a likeness between the two of them that they needed to understand. It is something that we need to understand.

What He is saying is the two commands actually fulfilled the request for one. The two commands are ultimately one command. What I mean is that the two Great Commandments are inseparable, you cannot have one without the other. They are one law in two parts. Now get this: they are the necessary precepts for how the two different parties within God's purposes become one. So, not only do we have the great overall purpose of two becoming one, in order to achieve that purpose we have to have two laws that act as one because of their likeness.

I know it may be a little confusing. I do not want to confuse you too much, but it is just amazing to me to see how God works this. His plan to make two become one has to be done through a law that is two in one. His mind is way beyond ours and He puts all this together.

So, we have the overarching goal of two becoming one and we also have the means to achieve it as a two-in-one law. Now, how do we know this? Well, Jesus Himself tells us in verse 40, where He says, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Everything comes off of these two major points, these two major principles. We could call them together the first principles of the covenant between God and His people and all other laws, precepts, statutes, judgments, whatever, depend on these two laws, these two commandments.

Do you know what the word depend means? Originally, it was from the Latin dependera and it literally means "to hang from." So if you have a necklace, it depends from your neck, it hangs from your neck, or the pendant itself hangs from the necklace, however you want to put it. Think of it this way, this is another way to look at this idea of hanging from. We have a couple of pictures in the back of the room here. Have you ever hung a painting or something with wire, where you have a wire strung between two screws that are in the frame of the picture? What do you do at that point to get it on the wall? Well, you put two screws or two hooks or whatever in the wall and you hang the wire on that and then it is pretty easy to balance it out so that I will not come along and look at it and say, "That's crooked." And I try to straighten it out because I am OCD that way.

But this is what Jesus is talking about. All the rest of the law and the prophets hangs from, like that painting, those two rings or two hooks or two screws on the wall. The two screws on the wall are love God, love neighbor. And everything else hangs from those two points. But they are, if you turn it around, the foundational points from which everything else rises or is supported.

Consider these two commandments. In a way, love God, love neighbor are parallel to the two parties: Christ/church, neighbor/brethren. The first: love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, first is directed toward God. And the second is directed towards human beings. Notice how that one is. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The first, love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That is wholehearted and absolute. Put everything in to the love of God is what it is saying. While the second, love your neighbor as yourself is more constrained and limited by human nature, it is limited to equality with self-love. He does not expect us to love somebody else more than we love ourselves, but He expects us to love Him much more than we love ourselves. And it is that stupid human nature that is in the way. And also the first and second commandments about idolatry. We are not supposed to love another person in the same same wholehearted way that we love God because then we make them into an idol.

So these two commandments, two Great Commandments, are both necessary then, even though the first is clearly greater, both are necessary to the process God has set up to bring God and man to oneness, the harmony. You cannot love God and not love our fellows, and we certainly cannot love our fellows and not love God and achieve God's purpose. That just does not work. We cannot neglect either one or we undermine the process of union with God.

Let us look at a few of these in I John 3 and 4 that says exactly that. In a way, we could say that this is one of the major themes of the epistle of I John. John is trying to drive this point home about love, about how necessary it is. and how it has to be full.

I John 3:10-14 In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest [that is, made clear, exposed]: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he does not love his brother. For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother's righteous. [we will get to that] Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life [meaning death in this world to eternal life as sons of God], because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.

You understand what he is saying there? If you are not showing your love for your brother, you are actually outside the bounds of what it is to be the elect. Now, obviously we can repent. But he is saying it is a pretty good indication of your status to see how you treat your brother, your status with God, your status within the church.

I John 3:15-19 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. [it is pretty stark] By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.

He is saying, hey, evaluate yourself, evaluate how you love your brother or not love your brother, and make the necessary changes because that is showing whether you actually love God. Let us see more of this.

I John 3:23 This is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment. [both]

I John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

I John 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

I John 4:20-21 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

I John 5:1-3 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. And this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.

John is trying to approach this in every way imaginable. He is trying to hit it from every angle. Love for God cannot be cut away from love of a brother or love of neighbor. We could add what Jesus says in John 15:12, that we must love each other as He loves us. And in John 13:35, where He says that the world will know that we are His disciples if we have love one for another. Loving our neighbor is a sign that we love God. And if we truly love God, we will love our neighbor.

We cannot divorce the two loves here. For if we do, we are undercutting the process that God has put in motion to bring us into unity. We cannot hold grudges against brethren, cannot spite brethren and still say that we love God because we are despising His children. It does not work. And we cannot cry from the rooftops how much we love God if we are still holding our brethren in contempt.

Let us look at Matthew 5, it goes further. God gives us such a high peak to climb, if you will. It is so high that it is daunting and it just gets more daunting here.

Matthew 5:43-48 [this is the love your enemy section of the Sermon on the Mount] "You have heard [speaking to the Jews] that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' [That is how they had interpreted that. Notice that "you shall love your neighbor" is in italics as a quote of the Old Testament, but "hate your enemy" is in regular type saying it is not there.] But I say to you [this is Jesus giving them a very important commandment], love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons [children] of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors [who are supposedly the basest of sinners] do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect."

What is He saying that is perfection here? Easy. Love everyone—brethren, neighbors, enemies. If you really want to be a son of God, if you want to win, if you want to reach the potential of eternal life in God's Kingdom, then you need to be perfect like the Father who loves everyone. Very, very high, impossible goal to reach in the flesh. But that is what we need to set our mind to do.

So, we are admonished to love our neighbor selflessly and impartially like God does, because that is the way we grow towards perfection. That is how we show it. By obeying this commandment from Christ, we also show our love for God. You might want to go look at the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, which shows this being acted out—that when we serve our brethren, when we show them love and concern, we are serving Christ. So love them and it is showing that we love God, the same action.

Now, as you know, I am a believer in considering things from the negative to help elucidate the positive. When we see how something fails to work it adds perspective and it helps us to see what went wrong, and it also can help us avoid those same mistakes. The two Great Commandments were broken very early in humanity's existence. In the Garden of Eden and just after they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. And God left those examples to help us see where mankind went wrong and continues to go wrong, and what we have to do to correct this in our own lives if we want to return to Eden, turn to the harmony that was there with God before sin.

Let us go back to Genesis 2. We should be able to speed through these pretty quickly because we know the story so well. And I think this is one way we can understand why Jesus meant that on these two commandments hang the law and the prophets because they are the two major principles that were brought out in these sins right at the beginning of the Book. Let us read chapter 2, verses 15 and 16. This is actually the first command given to Adam. It is in chapter 2. There were commands in chapter 1 but it appears to have been given before God made Eve and therefore before "be fruitful and multiply." So this was the original command, as far as I can tell, that God gave Adam before Eve was was made.

Genesis 2:15-17 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

That was the command. You can have all these trees and all the fruits that come from those trees, but just this one that is in the center of the Garden—verboten, hands off, do not touch it, do not eat it. Do not do anything to it, you cannot have it. That is the one command. So we can see it, looking at it from this direction, that it was a test of obedience. He wanted to see whether they would actually do what He said. And as Jesus says in John 14:15, "If you love Me, keep My commandments."

So that was the one commandment. If they kept that commandment, then it would demonstrate that they loved Him. The first Great Commandment, right? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. So it was a test to see if Adam, and later Eve, would show love toward God in obedience to His word.

Genesis 3:1-6 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch, it lest you die.'" The serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

The serpent was more cunning than anything. He knew what God had done. He knew that God had given Adam and Eve a test commandment, and he was going to come and see if he could spoil the test, if he could undermine what God was trying to get out of them there. So he immediately struck at this foundational principle by questioning it, by undermining it, by directly denying it, whichever way worked. And Eve was deceived and ate. But Adam was not deceived. We find out in another place he deliberately disobeyed and sinned. He essentially said to God, "I don't love you with all my being. I love tasty fruit more. I love Eve more. I love independence more. I love selfishness."

Genesis 3:8-11 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said, "Where are you?" So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"

The result of the sin was hiding from God, desperately attempting not to be in His company. But God was up to the task here. He knew what was going on. Let us drop down to verse 22 after He gives the curses on the serpent and then on the woman and the man.

Genesis 3:22-24 Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"—therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

God could not just have them hide from Him. He had to go farther than this because of their sin. Because of their sin they were no longer fit to dwell in His presence. They were no longer fit to dwell in His garden, the place of His abode, you would say. They could not live with the symbol of the Tree of Life so close. They had to be guarded from it. So they were shown the door because they had shown their hand. They did not love God, at least not to the measure that they were supposed to—with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind. They would not love Him. It is pretty evident that they had made up their mind that they would go their own way.

The result was not what He was looking for: two becoming one. Now it was them going their own way. There was disunion, not unity, there was divorce, there was separation between the two parties, that is, God and man. His purpose of two becoming one would not work in an environment of hatred, of disobedience, and of selfishness. So He cut off man's access to Him. That was the penalty. Man has been cut off ever since.

That was that was the principle of the first great commandment that they broke.

Genesis 4:1-15 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." She bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it."

Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose against Abel his brother and killed him. And the Lord said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?" And He said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth." Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is greater than I can bear! Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face; I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth [yeah, Cain, that is just what He said], and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me." And the Lord said to him, "Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." [and then he gives him the mark]

Here we have a negative example of the second Great Commandment. A serious lack of love between literal brothers. Perhaps they were even twins. We do not know. It has been speculated that they might have been.

Cain had already started off on the wrong foot because he likely disobeyed God's command regarding what kind of sacrifice to bring and he becomes, then, jealous over God's acceptance of Abel's correct sacrifice and he begins to storm about, brooding and threatening. But God pulls him up short at that point and tells him that he still has a chance to get control of himself before things get out of hand. "You're about to make a really bad decision here, Cain. You're about to sin in an irrevocable way. Get control of yourself!" But he ignores God. He breaks the first Great Commandment right there. And he kills his brother, breaking the second Great Commandment. The ultimate way, total divorce from Abel in life. Abel could not come back from that. As God had done to Adam and Eve, he now curses Cain in the same way.

Did you notice the very similar way He cursed Cain in the way that He cursed Adam, and He sent him into exile? Same punishment for the other half of that one Great Commandment. Both are terrible to break because they break off the unity and the communion that He is trying to have in order to make us one with Him.

So, within four chapters of the beginning of the Book, the Bible has already set up the understanding of these two Great Commandments. It is no wonder Jesus said that all the rest of Scripture hangs from them, because everything else that happened after that is a result of those two massive sins. And God was giving the laws to try to get us back to Eden, back to oneness with Him, by having to give the two Great Commandments, and all the other commandments that hang from them.

In this life there are two parties we have to account for: Godkind and humankind. And the two Great Commandments regulate how that is to be done to bring out harmonious living through love: love of God, love of neighbor. If we break either one of them, we break both, and we end up being disunited with both until repentance. When we are disunited with both God and man through sin there is no way that we can make any progress toward oneness, perfection, and eternal life.

I would like to finish with several verses in John 14.

John 14:20-21 "At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. [He is talking about this oneness.] He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him."

John 14:23 "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him."

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