The only mandate that matters to Christians

Photo by Vera Davidova on Unsplash

These days, a lot of people are talking (or shouting) about “mandates.”

Should the government mandate less or more?

While Christians may be citizens of the United States by birth or naturalization, we choose to be subjects of the kingdom of our Christ.

As subjects of that kingdom, we hold ourselves to its mandates above all.

So when the world fights about the mandates of its governments, Christians can be calm and cool. We just have to focus on living “up” to the mandates of our Christ and our Christ gives us only one simple mandate.

If we obey that one mandate, our Christ promises that all will be well.

What is that single, simple mandate?

When the Pharisees heard [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” [Jesus] said to him: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first 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.” (Gospel of Matthew 22:34-40).

This is my paraphrase:

The only thing you really need to know, said Jesus, is two rules that are like each other and therefore really just one rule: Love God by loving the people around you. All the other good rules in the whole world really come out of this one rule. So, if you can remember to love God by loving the people around you, you will live the God life.

The “love” (from the Greek agape) that we read about in the Gospel of Matthew 22:34-40 is not a feeling love; it is an action love.

The kind of love that Jesus mandates is love that gets up and goes to work. That starts with doing the work of empathy and understanding, which may be why “patient” and “kind” are the first two words the Bible uses to describe love (see 1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Going on from empathy and understanding, agape love goes to work to meet the needs of bodies, hearts, and minds.

Agape love is the story of Jesus’s life.

It is the story of Jesus giving away everything he had–and even giving up his life–for anyone and everyone. Nobody had to “deserve” or “earn” the love Jesus gave them. He considered everyone.

That is to be the story of our lives, too, if we are Christians like our Christ.

It is to be the story of the life of the church of Christ.

Love is the single, simple mandate for Christians.

Americans will debate what the American government can and cannot mandate for them.

But Christians need to be above all that, because we are subject to our Christ, who gives us just one mandate. But it is a mandate that demands so much more of us than getting a shot or wearing a mask.

It is the mandate to love God by loving the people around us.

As subjects of our Christ, let us follow his mandate by following his example. Let us be brave about giving away what we think of as ours (knowing that even our own selves really belong to Christ). Let us lay down our lives for others. Even when it means laying down our privileges and rights.

This is the single, simple mandate of the kingdom of our Christ.

This is the Way.

Grace and peace.