Episode 29: Can You Love Your Family More Than God?

Episode 29 of the Christ for Us Bible Study Podcast

Second Table of the Law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40

Both tables command you to love. The first table commands you to love God. The second table commands you to love your neighbor. Yet, the first table commands a different intensity of love than the second.

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. ³⁸ And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹ Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10:37-39

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26

The explanation to every Commandment after the First Commandment in Luther’s Small Catechism begins, “We should fear and love God, so that…” because we cannot love our neighbor without first loving God.