Hillel was a famous Jewish leader, scholar, and sage who lived just before Jesus was born. He was a Mishnah and Talmud scholar and known for his wisdom. One day, a Gentile came to him and told him he would convert to Judaism if he could explain the whole Torah (the Old Testament Scriptures) while standing on one foot. Hillel didn’t bat an eye. He balanced on one foot and said, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”

Jesus would have liked that. In fact, after Jesus finished talking about money, he spent a whole lot of time talking about how to love people well. There has never been more talk of love and less evidence of it than in our own time. The very people who speak the most about love are often the ones lighting people up with flame-throwers on social media. For all the talk of love, it’s enough to make one wonder if there is any truth attached to it, or if this notion of love is just sentimentality.

Jesus has a lot to say about love and what it means to really love people. We’d better listen carefully because Jesus and Paul both routinely sum up the message of the Old Testament as loving God and loving your neighbor. The reason I think we’d do well to listen is because Jesus, who is love incarnate—the one to whom love is not something learned but intrinsic to his very being—has the right to define love, not our culture. The very notion of love is predicated on this: “God is love.”

Join us Sunday as we dig into Jesus' teachings about love to his disciples. And if you haven’t joined us for Sunday School, come on early, drop your kids off, and join us in the Inquirer’s Class or in the class about how to read the Bible.

Well, it is Valentine’s Day, so I must head off early to prepare the greatest food I can for my Valentine! Hey, "loving people!”

Blessings,

Jim