The Greatest Commandments

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'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."
(Matt 22:36-40 NIV)

The habit of people to neglect commands that conflicted with their favorites, especially the ones they had created themselves, was the reason Jesus said that the commands to love God and one's neighbor were the greatest commandments.

And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'  But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
(Mark 7:9-13 NIV)

Although it was permissible for an Israelite to lift up an animal from the ditch and ignore the Sabbath laws (Matt 12:11), no other commandment was so important that humans could ignore the love of God and neighbor, for all other commands hang from these two as clothes from a hanger.

Love does no harm. Try to justify greed while telling yourself that you love your neighbor as yourself and you'll get lost in the sea of contradictions. Try to justify indifference while telling yourself that you love God and you have to created your own god - which is true of a lot of people. The God of the Bible is as relentless about his requirements as the god of Money is lax in his; the former requires us to be just, the latter invites us to become unjust.

Justice extracts what mercy withholds, and grace gives what love is offering. Try to live a life without mercy, and you'll get justice; try to live a life without love, and you won't get grace. If we want to avoid loving our neighbors as ourselves, we better not pretend we love God either.

Love is not an excuse for injustice.