Loving Those Who Watch Over You – The Second Great Commandment

Loving Those Who Watch Over You

Matthew 22:37-39

And he 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 great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

1 Thessalonians 5:12, 13

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.

Love those who have authority over you.

The list is long here of people we must learn to love: ministers, elders, civil magistrates, police, employers, teachers, and more. We can sometimes feel that those in authority over us are fair game for our criticism and negative comments. Pastors and church leaders come in for a great deal of criticism, most of it behind their backs. Presidents and Congress persons are not immune to all manner of harsh and condemning speech. But love requires us to nurture respect for those who are over us according to the divine economy, and to esteem them highly in love, even if we don’t always agree with their decisions. Do you love the President? Enough to pray for him daily? Do you love the elders of your church, so that you give thanks to God for their sacrifices and offer yourself to them to help in building-up the Body of Christ? Do you love your pastor, more than just during that one season of the year marked out as “Pastor Appreciation Month”? Do the people you talk with about all these people get the distinct impression that you respect and love them? Because, if not, then you have some work to do. We must love those who are over us in the Lord even when we find it difficult to do so, and even when we must respectfully disagree with their policies and actions.

What are some ways you might express love for those over you in the Lord?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.