“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “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."
The greatest commandment is to love God with everything we have and the second is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Before we are called to love others, we are first called to love God. Part of loving Him involves and includes loving others, but there is a reason it is second. It is necessarily second in that it must follow the first in every sense of the word. It cannot precede the first in order or importance and it must follow the first in submission and succession.
"The Great Commission falls under the second greatest commandment. It is not the first." - Jim Wilson, Weapons and Tactics: A Handbook on Personal Evangelism
The Great Commission is part of loving your neighbor. It is very important, but it is secondary. Those who make it their top priority shipwreck their faith and set a bad example to those they hope to convert.
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