To Love God and Neighbor

Hey everyone,
Well I'm ripping this blog off of part of my sermon this past Sunday, so any HCC people, you'll recognize it and probably fall asleep (lol--ok I didn't really 'lol', nor did i chuckle).
Sermon Sunday was on Ephesians 6:1-9, which is the section Paul uses to unpack now children are to relate to their parents and how workers (slaves in the original context) are to relate to their bosses (masters). Of course, the over-riding theme throughout the entire 5:22-6:9 section in Ephesians is the same over-riding theme prevalent all throughout the Scriptures: In view of God's holiness and mercy shown most through Christ Jesus' work, do this (whatever this is). A lot of people assume the Bible is just a list of rules by which to abide so that God won't punish us or be mean to us. Of course, there have been many Christians over the years who portrayed the Gospel in these terms, so I can't totally blame the people who wrongly assume that. It should also be understood that all of us, before we receive Christ, are in rebellion to God and actually are enemies of God. Paul says in Romans 5:10 that we who have Christ have been reconciled to God, even though we were enemies of God. He then goes on in Romans 8:7 to say that those who's minds are set on the flesh are hostile to God, since their mind "does not submit to God's law; indeed it can not." We could go on, but my point is that although some Christians have done a bad job at portraying the God of love, ALL non-Christians are in rebellion against God's holiness and even if Christians were to present the God of love better, portrayed most gloriously in the face of Jesus Christ, most non-Christians (if not all) would still find some reason to not believe--because they're in rebellion unless the Holy Spirit does the work of awakening their hearts to Christ (which we pray for and seek to model in our lives as ambassadors of reconciliation).
All this to say that the context in the Ephesians passage is that those of us who claim to have Christ, who "have learned Christ" (Eph. 4:20), have "put off the old self" (4:22), are "children of light" (5:8), and are working to "understand what the will of the Lord is" (5:17), don't just follow the rules because we want to appease an angry and vengeful God--we follow them because Christ already followed all the rules and went to the cross to make a final sacrifice for our sins so that we could be reconciled to God, and now we follow His rules because we WANT to. You can look all throughout Deuteronomy 6 to hear Moses talking about how all of God's laws are for our good, and are to be followed in response to His goodness and provision.
In closing the sermon Sunday, I felt it best to head back to Jesus' telling of "the Great Commandment" in Matthew 22:37-40. Jesus says it's to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength", and then He continues on with another command that is apparently to follow in succession, to "love your neighbor as yourself". When referring to 'the Great Commandment', people typically speak of both commandments, even though Jesus said the first is the greatest and the second is second. Nevertheless, the fact that He says both means that the second is to be critically understood and followed. This relates to the discussion at hand because at the end of the day, Paul's concern throughout Ephesians is that we treasure what God's done for us FIRST, and then act it out in our relationships with each other SECOND, which seems synonymous with what Jesus said.
The point of this blog post today is summed up in this one statement: The Great Commandment is sufficient to explain ALL that God wants from us (Jesus said it is), but in order to understand what it means to be ministers of the Gospel, we have to continually keep watch over our following of the WHOLE Commandment. What I mean is this: While we are to love God with the whole of our entire self, we clearly MUST have a love for our neighbor which flows from our love for God. At the same time, while we are to love our neighbor, our concern for them must never eclipse our concern for the holiness and glory of God.
It may sound like I'm speaking obvious things that don't need to be emphasized, but I don't think I am (obviously, I wouldn't be saying it otherwise). I'm convinced that one of the chief failures of city churches (I'm a pastor in a city church) is that they've either leaned too heavily on one half of the Great Commandment, or leaned too heavily on the other half.
What I mean is this: In seeking to do Gospel ministry, many people have become so concerned with God's holiness and following His rules, that they've neglected the work of loving their neighbor and caring for them. On the flip-side, many others have become so concerned with caring for and loving their neighbor, they aren't concerned in the least bit with God's holiness and truly loving Him with their whole being.
Since I don't want to write a blog as long as my last one for fear of having something that's so excruciatingly long-winded that people take one look and click 'x', I'll stop here for now as I've laid out the argument, and I'll unpack it in a blog later this week. Keep posted, and thank you all for reading.