CHAPTER 2 - All That I Command, Pp. 33
Immediately, I was confronted with (and it seemed like for the first time) Jesus’ Commandment. This was more than another teaching. It had the full weight of the word command as used in the Ten Commandments found in the Law of Moses.
And for the first time, I found myself considering the possibility that Jesus may have given us only one command and I had missed it! How could I have missed something so obvious? For one thing, I had not really taken the word command to mean
what it said. For example, when I read the Great Commission, it went like this in my mind: “teaching them to obey everything I have taught you.”
Yet if words mean anything (and they do), I couldn’t arbitrarily substitute the word taught for the word command. Now I was confronting the possibility that while Jesus had taught us many things, all of which are very important, He may have commanded us only one thing, to love one another as He had loved us.
CHAPTER 3 – THE EARLY FATHERS, Pp. 41
These early Christians had a treasure, the Command they had been given by Jesus. They loved each other deeply. This love was clearly seen in the Scriptural record of those early years.
However, with the passage of time, their love for one another was tested. Over the decades that followed, it appears that their attention drifted from the Command Jesus had given them. Beyond that, it was as if a master thief was lurking in the shadows. He had spotted the treasure. It was not that he had any use for it; actually, he hated it. If only he could steal their “mark of authenticity!” All he needed was for them to take their eyes off the Command so he could slip it from the table and into the shadows.
It seems that this thief was willing to let them have orthodoxy, but only if defined without the One Commandment Jesus had given them. Let them debate their doctrines, disagree with one another, even ignore and dislike each other. He would keep them so preoccupied in their quest for sound doctrine that they wouldn’t even miss the stolen treasure. His wildest dream was that they would come to hate each other—better yet, kill one another—in their quest to preserve an incomplete orthodoxy!
CHAPTER 18 - Bridge: Words I Want To Hear, Pp. 172
I was beginning to understand that God was my Father. I had known that truth theologically for many years, but now I was starting to experience what I had only grasped intellectually before. God was more than a distant Creator. He was my Father and He loved me deeply. There was no love deficit in Him. He had enough love to go around, enough to fill and overflow every one of us with His love. God is love. He loved me!
I learned that I could trust God enough to let him demolish the walls of protection that I had built around my heart. They were ill-conceived, my own crude attempt to “save myself.” The walls I had built were actually keeping me from experiencing my Heavenly Father’s love for me, keeping His love from nourishing my thirsty soul—a soul that was designed to hear the words “Son, I love you.”
