Do you have a personal relationship with God's people?

By Michael Incorvia

St. Lawrence giving alms to the poor
(photo: Wikimedia Commons)

  
Faith is more than a personal relationship with God; faith is a personal relationship with God and His people.

Jesus preached a faith where: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:34-39, Mark 12:28-34, and Luke 10:25-28) And where is our neighbor to be found?  Our neighbor is found in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned (Matthew 25:35-36).

As Jesus indicated, “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:40)  The inability of Israel and Judah to follow these two commandments was part of God’s indictment against them (see for example Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Joel and Micah), which, in part, lead to their exile.

These two commandments have been and will continue to be fundamental to a relationship with God.  For this reason faith is not only a relationship with God, it is a relationship with God and His people.


Michael blogs at To Love and Truth.