2 Peter 3:2b Part II — Focal Point

… and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

Summary: Satan’s strategy often relies on the tactic of “divide and conquer.” When it comes to dividing up Jesus’ commands, we might be falling into Satan’s hands.  

Our last meditation, “Deep Waters,” discussed the number of commands that are attributed to Jesus. There are a lot of them! Depending on how you define a “command,” some lists contain up to forty-nine different ones. Even a short list contains thirty or more.

Many years ago, late one evening, I sat in the living room of a deeply distraught coworker. His life was in turmoil. He had spent several hours unburdening himself to me about all the things in his life that were going wrong. He believed in God, but every time the conversation would turn to our need to trust God, he would counter with one of the many worries that weighed on his mind.

Finally, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a quarter. I set the quarter flat on the coffee table between us and asked, “How many sides does this quarter have?”

He stopped moaning for a minute. He glanced at me with the look you might give an over-ripe banana and then studied the quarter. “Not including the edge?” he asked.

“Not including the edge,” I replied.

“Two,” was his obvious answer.

“Correct,” I replied. Then I picked up the quarter and held it up between us. Turning it back and forth, I asked, “How many sides can you see at one time?”

The answer, of course, is one. That is what I wanted him to understand. I wanted him to see that if he was focused on the problems in his life; he was not looking at the answer, God. If he turned his attention to God, everything else fades into the background.

The way our minds are made, we can only look at one thing at a time. If we think we can see more than that, we are fooling ourselves. We can flip from one thing to another with amazing speed, but the view screen of our mind can only show one thing at a time. (Meditation is nothing more than slowing the changes down on the mind’s view screen and focusing on one thing for more than a millisecond.)

If all of this is true, then is it possible to focus on more than one “command” at a time?

This is why people get into arguments over what the Bible says. We can all agree that the Bible says a lot of things, but people like to argue over which of these things is the most important. The one that I hear the most is people arguing about is Matthew 28:19–20, where Jesus says, “Go and make disciples…”

Can we hold “go and make disciples” and “love each other” (John 15:17) in our minds at the same time? No. Actually, we cannot. If we claim we can, we are just kidding ourselves.

Here is the problem I see: people who want to “go and make disciples” seem to have a different attitude than those who love each other as their first priority. If I am going to make you into a disciple, the first thing I have to do is get you to agree with me about the Bible and God. Then I have to get you to do certain “disciple” things. In all this, I am telling you what to think and what to do. Is that loving?

But what if both “commands” are the same thing? What if we turn to what Jesus called his “command” and stick with that? He said, “This is my command: Love each other.” (John 15:17) If I love you (agapé love), is that not the best way to disciple? I seem to remember that Jesus also told us to serve each other (Matthew 20:26–28, John 13:14).

What if these so-called “commands” are just parts of the whole? If we divide up Jesus’ commands, don’t we fall into the trap of the “house divided” (Mark 3:25)? If we fall into that trap, do we honor God or serve Satan?

Application: Try thinking of our Lord’s command to “love one another” as the only command and see where that leads. 

Food for Thought: How is looking at all of Jesus’ commands as one command similar to seeing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one God?