I was never a religious person, yet at a very young age, my parents taught me to believe in God. But the truth is that I did not know God. I wasn’t always a Christian but one day I decided to follow Jesus even though I knew very little about him. But the more I heard and read about Jesus the more I learned what God was like. Most people don’t realize it, but the main reason we know what God is like is that Jesus dwelt among us. Before that, we only knew who God was and what he had done but we had no idea what he was like. We had no idea what was most important to him.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” – Matthew 22:37-40 NIV

Until this encounter with Jesus, everyone assumed that the focus of God’s law was to behave and become a good person as measured by the law. But what Jesus taught is that what’s most important to God is not religion or being a good person, but rather the relationships, loving God and loving others.

What we learn from Jesus is that God is a relational God, not a religious God. That He established his laws not so that we can become good people but rather guide us through the process of becoming loving people. Not just loving the way we love each other but loving others the way God in Jesus has loved us.