Which should be more important to a Christian: rules or people? The rules I am speaking of are the laws of the Bible, including the Ten Commandments. The commandments have been here since the time of Moses, and that set of laws sent to us by God is incredibly important. The commandments are there to protect us from harming ourselves and our relationships with others. At one time, everything was based on following the laws, but then Jesus came.

Jesus, the son of God, has spiritual authority over scripture: what he says in the new testament is the final say. If we love Jesus and God, we are to keep his commandments (John 14:15, 14:23, 15:10). But then, Jesus added more commandments, commandments that we sometimes live as if we have forgotten. 

Jesus told the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32):  a young man left his father’s home and squandered his inheritance, then returned home in shame, but he found his father rejoicing to see him and welcoming him back. The young man’s brother, who had stayed home to work and be responsible, was jealous and furious that the son came back and was treated well. Jesus was referring to the son as a person first finding Christ or a Christian coming back home, and the brother was a reference to the Pharisees. God our father is happy when a wayward Christian comes back to Him. If we feel angry when we see a Christian come back from a sinful life, could it be because we are more focused on following the rules rather than on loving every person? 

Who in the Bible was obsessed with rules and put rules before people? The Pharisees. Who in the Bible would discard the rules to help a person? Jesus (Mark 3:1-6, Mark 2:23-28, Luke 10:30-37) Jesus even showed one man that being a Christian is more than just following the commandments (Mark 10:17-22).

Jesus tells us in the gospels that the greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart ... and love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28-31, John 15:12). He practiced what he preached. Do you practice what he preached? When it comes to people, who are you more like? Who is your church more like?   

If you approach a person with love, what you say will come across much more differently than if you approach a person with rules. Which do you think would have the most impact and mean the most to a person: “You are a sinner and are going to Hell unless you change,” (1 Corinthians 13:1) or “I love you and am concerned about you. Let me help you” (Galatians 6:1).

You may not say this to just the unsaved. You may find yourself saying this to a fellow Christian, someone who you may want to say should know better and therefore shouldn’t be given any help at all. What kind of things have you heard Christians say about other Christians who are caught in sin? “He made his bed now he can lie in it. She deserves what she got. Well, he shouldn’t have been doing that in the first place.” There’s almost a satisfaction in watching someone suffer because they didn’t follow the rules. That doesn’t seem very loving. How do you act toward a wayward Christian? Do you treat them with silence, condemnation, hatefulness or disdain? Do you ignore them when you see them and treat them like they don’t exist? Does that way of thinking sound more like Jesus or like a Pharisee? 

Why do we act this way toward each other when we know exactly what Jesus wants from us? Could something be going on inside ourselves? If we are following the commandments, and we see someone who isn’t, we see ourselves as right, and the sinner as wrong. This builds up pride in ourselves. We begin to think we are right, we are better, and we have the right to judge others. While we think we are being righteous, we could actually be acting and thinking very self righteously. The sinful nature in ourselves can be very deceiving, because if Jesus truly abides in us, we will have no condemnation for others (Romans 8:1-2). The brother of the prodigal son is an example of this. We can’t take Jesus’ parables on just the surface level. We need to look at them from every angle and see what he may be telling us about ourselves.

If, as Christians, we believe that Christ died for us, then we should follow His commandments and love one another and treat each other as he would treat us. We have to become as obsessed with the commandments of the New Testament as we are with the commandments of the Old Testament. 

When Jesus came, he came to not only die for us, but to teach us. He told what the greatest commandments were, and they were to love people and God. Let me say that again: the greatest commandment, according to our savior, is to love. Can you follow the Ten Commandments while still following the greatest commandments of Jesus?  The old and new testament commandments shouldn’t contradict one another (they didn’t in the life of Jesus), but it’s sometimes seen that a Christian who is perfect in following the ten commandments is severely lacking in the following of the greatest commandments. It is possible to follow them all, but it may take some changes in our hearts. We must shift our focus from seeing what God hates in a particular person (sin) to what God loves in that person. For many of us, if we try as hard to live up to the greatest commandments as we do the Ten Commandments, we won’t be nearly as prideful in our ability to be perfect. Even if we say we are loving to everyone, there is someone somewhere who would say that we aren’t. I can’t help but think that if we truly believed, followed and lived each day the two greatest commandments, that we wouldn’t have to worry much about breaking the ten commandments.

When Jesus walked the earth, he challenged the fundamentalism of his time. If he were here today, would he need to challenge the fundamentalism of his church? What would happen if we cared about people as much as we cared about following the rules? Do you think that we would be a little closer to what Jesus wanted in his churches and in ourselves? Do you think we could reach more people as Christians?  We know the commandments Jesus gave us. Let’s make sure we live them.

Kelly Farris is a follower of Jesus Christ who resides in Jones County. She can be reached at churchincrisis@yahoo.com