What do you love the most out of all the things in the world? I ask this question all over the world. As I travel with Passion Life, it’s one of the questions that we routinely ask, and of course, I commonly get the good Christian answer. “Well, of course, I love Jesus the most. I love God the most.” Well, that is the correct answer. But outside of Jesus, what of all the things in this world that God has created, do you love the most? The most common answer is my family, my children, my spouse, the people who are closest to me. That, again, is the correct answer to that question. Of all the things that you love, you probably love your people the most. That doesn’t mean that you love all people equally.
We as Christians are commanded to show love to people, and yet there are degrees to which we are able to show love because love is inherently a moral thing. Take an instance that happened to my son. He came upon a man raping a woman. At that moment, he was not morally justified to love the two of them the same way. Love being moral at this type of time has to pick sides. Love picks sides. Love shows a moral passion for righteousness and love also shows a hatred for evil.
The Bible uses the word hate, even in reference to God. There are things that God hates. It’s okay to hate. It’s okay to hate sin and immorality and evil and wickedness. So love having an inherent moral component to it requires that we pick sides. Love requires us to show a passion for righteousness and a hatred for evil. Now, when it comes to God’s people, God shows his love for them by protecting them. That’s the same way that we are. What I love the most is my family, my spouse, and my children. I will protect them just like you will protect the people that you love the most.
My wife is the sweetest person. I know everyone loves my wife. She’s gentle, kind, compassionate and full of joy and cheer, but don’t mess with their children because she kind of becomes a mama bear really fast. She will protect the things that she loves the most. God is the same way. What God loves the most, God protects the most. He will, just like we are expected to, protect his innocent people. How does God protect the innocent? Well, he does it in different ways and at different times. There are times when he will miraculously protect innocent human life by saving it.
One account of this was the way he saved Paul from the adder that came out of the fire on the beach in Malta. That was a very unusual circumstance. It was a miracle. It was a miracle when God provided a gigantic fish to swallow Jonah and spit him up on dry land three days later. That is possible for God, but the normal way that God protects human life is through the giving of his moral law. Now civil governments are the same way. We make laws against driving on the sidewalk, for instance, because the government of the United States cares about its people and wants to protect their people from harm. Therefore we have a law that says you can’t drive on the sidewalk or harm will come to you if you do that. You are in violation of the law and you will be punished for it.
God is the same way. God gives his moral law to protect that which he loves most. And what he loves most is human beings. Us, you and me. We’re generally well familiar with the giving of the moral law that protects life. It’s in God’s “top 10 list.” The sixth commandment says, “You shall not commit murder.” That is a prohibition, and because it is a prohibition, we would refer to that as a negative law. It doesn’t mean that the law is bad. It doesn’t mean that the law is wrong. We say it’s a negative law because it is a prohibitive law. God is telling us what we are not allowed to do.
There is a positive corollary of that exact same law. It is called the Great Commandment. The scribes and the Pharisees came to Jesus and said, “Of all the laws, what’s the most important?” God said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.” The positive side of “do not murder” is “love Your neighbor.” Jesus quoted it there in the book of Mark, I think in chapter 12, from the Old Testament, “Love you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
God takes love a step further. Not only does God prohibit murder, but he compels us to be proactive in our protection of the things that he loves the most. We are to show love proactively by loving our neighbor as ourselves. This is a starting point for a conversation that is going to get pretty deep and have various different offshoots here. In the next couple of lessons that I’m going to record, we are going to talk about what innocence means. Is there such a thing as innocence? What does it mean to shed innocent blood? But for now, I want to make sure that I impress upon you that God protects human life in various different ways.
The primary way is through the giving of his moral law that is both negative and positive. We should and must do the same. We must value human life. We must refrain from murdering the innocents around us, and we must proactively engage in protecting the most innocent around us.