Live Vertizontal

Flew into Dallas to speak at a church down in Temple, Texasthis weekend just gone. It was over two months ago that I was struck with what I would share with these young people at the weekend.
If one goes to the bible and looks at the book of Matthew and chapter 22 there is a magnificent section of text which is where Christ is interacting with a whole bunch of guys that are trying to attack Him and undermine Him. Particularly they want to destroy the claim that He made all through His life that He was the Messiah, the anointed one of God who would deliver people from bondage; one who would inaugurate a new Kingdom of the rule of God that would bring peace, and restoration to a broken, destruction-bound world.

In this section Jesus in the unbelievably powerful way He was so often capable of doing sums up all of faith, all of life & solidifies the matrix of what it is to live out the life God has desired for mankind. In a word Christ tells us to live VERTIZONTALLY.
This word that I use to sum up the stunning call that Christ makes which is this. Love toward God (vertically) with all of your heart, soul, and mind; then as a visible expression of this love for God love your neighbour (horizontally) as you love yourself. Christ says give all of your being to loving God, and if you claim to love God you will love people in the way they most need. The greatest way you can love others is to love God in the way defined here by Christ.

Mark these words of John Piper

“…there is a sense in which the second commandment (to love your neighbor) is the visible goal of the whole Word of God. It's not as though loving God is not here, or that loving God is less important; rather loving God is made visible and manifest and full in our visibly, practically, sacrificially loving others...
'Love your neighbour as yourself…': It is overwhelming because it seems to demand that I tear the skin off my body and wrap it around another person so that I feel that I am that other person; and all the longings that I have for my own safety and health and success and happiness I now feel for that other person as though he were me."

Live it!
Simon