Lawrence (not his real name) showed up for class one morning. We were more than a week into the fall semester, and I had never seen him before, though I knew his name from the class roster. I asked to speak with him after class.
“We’ve missed you?” I said. “Have you been sick?’
No, he had not been sick. He had simply been skipping. Didn’t feel like coming.
“Well, then. Here are the assignments you have missed.”
He promptly told me he would not do them and that he would not be coming to class. School was not important.
“You do not understand what you are doing.”
“I know what I am doing,” he said.
“No you don’t,” I said. “You have no clue. You go try to find a decent job as a high school dropout and then come back and tell me you know what you are doing.”
Lawrence left the room, and I never saw him again.
Sometimes people don’t understand the full consequences of their choices.
In fact, if Scripture is true, you and I don’t understand the full consequences of our choices. Most of us are Lawrence painted worse.
We are backwards concerning what matters. We think we are OK simply because we have not murdered, robbed a bank, or cheated on our spouse. We don’t understand that those sins are merely derivative – that another sin is actually bigger than they.
Jesus gave us the greatest commandment. He said it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it – to love your neighbor as yourself. He then said that all the commandments hang on these two. In other words, if you love the Lord, you will not murder, steal, lie, commit adultery, or do any other sin. And wherever you find murder, stealing, lying and sexual sin, at their foundation is the absence of a love for God.
The greatest commandment is to love God; the greatest sin is to not love God. When you refuse to love God and refuse to worship and serve Him alone, God gives you over to your passions, and you further sin by following your passions (see Romans 1). If you fail to love God, you fail. Period.
And here’s the thing. Most people fail to love God. In fact, most people don’t even think on God. They don’t see God, and they certainly don’t see any connection between their relationship with Him and their sin. In fact, when people don’t see God, they usually don’t even see their sin. They, thus, don’t see the consequences of failing to love God.
But to not love God is the biggest sin. It is the foundation for all other sins, and it excludes you from the kingdom of God; for the kingdom of God is built on the love of God, and those in that kingdom love Him.
