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“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
Our response to God (his essence and his revelation) is love, love for God. This love is all consuming, heart, soul, mind and strength. Strength has traditionally been interpreted to mean the body or physical world. This indicates the importance of the physical in our relationship with God as manifested in baptism and communion. If Paul’s analogy of marriage holds true then baptism becomes the consummation of our relationship with God (1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 5:31-32) and communion the perpetual wedding feast.

“Love your neighbor as yourself”
This final portion shows that our relationship with God is to be manifested outwards as well as upwards. Our relationship with others is secondary only to God and the love poured into us should be poured into others. These two relationships are so closely linked that to live without love for our neighbor is to live without love for God (1 John 2:9-10).
This starts with our first neighbors are our families (1 Timothy 5:8) and for those who are married this is your spouse. This means that whatever is good for our relationship with God is good for our relationships with our families and for our other neighbors.
Jesus’ ministry was marked by this love for neighbor, in his inaugural address he states, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19).” This should serve as a great indicator to those who follow Christ, the best way to love our God is to love our neighbors.

Is there anything than can unify denominations and “non-denominations”? Richard Foster believes that these different branches of Christianity are all streams of living water flowing together. But what is it that unites these streams? They must be united in the core of the gospel.

I believe that Christ offered the core of the gospel in Mark 12. In an attempt at unity I post this as part one of a multi-part series on the core of the gospel. Christ followers are to be defined and united by what we do, in this teaching Christ focuses on action. We are to unite under the authority of Christ to act as his body in his absence. Isn’t that the most important thing? Acting as the one undivided body of Christ? In order to act in service to God the first statement of the core of the gospel focuses on the nature of who God is.

“Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God,”

The unity of the church is centered on the Lord our God. Here God reveals his personal nature desiring to be known as “the God of his people.” (Jeremiah 24:7) He is defined by his actions of grace and love towards those who are his. He desires to call us as “his own” and for us to call him “ours.” He manifests his grace and love primarily through self revelation and has taken the initiative to reveal himself to humanity. He starts in the garden, works through the law, then is finally revealed through his son Jesus Christ. He will be fully revealed on the last day when heaven and earth are no more. Until that day he reveals himself to humanity through the church which is called his body filled with the Spirit. We are unified in knowing this God and being known by him. We are also unified when we follow his example by coming to know and being known by other believers (James 5:16).

“the Lord is one.”

While God may have three distinct personages (Matthew 3:16-17; Matthew 28:19): Father, Son and Spirit – he is still one. His “oneness” also speaks to his completeness. He is one or as the text in Deuteronomy 6:4 states he is alone. The only God, all sufficient in himself. (See the “Definition of Chalcedon” for a more complete treatment.)

The unity of God is important to note as the “God of the Old Testament” is not opposed to Jesus, rather he is fully revealed through him. Additionally, the Spirit will not manifest any new teachings that are not one with (or congruent) to that which was revealed through Jesus and his disciples (2 Corinthians 11:3-4). It is through this unified revelation (known as the Bible) that we as Christ-followers can be united. We follow Christ’s example and that of those who have gone before us (1 Corinthians 11:1). When we live in unity we act as the Trinity and represent the body of Christ in his absence (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). In order to get to the core of the gospel we must recognize the complete and united nature of God and we must model our lives accordingly.

We didn’t even know it was missing, but thankfully someone has finally found the lost tomb of Jesus. People who had been worshiping at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are in need of a refund. Unfortunately there are many who won’t be able to ask for that refund as they have been dead since Eusebius’ time (135CE?). And the church that stands there today dates to the 4th century. (Visit “The Church of the Holy Sepulchure” for pictures and more information.)
But church tradition isn’t the main problem for the “Lost Tomb of Jesus,” there are much greater obstacles to overcome. One is the fact that even secular scholars and archaeologists deny the validity of its claim. It’s not just Christians chafing at the thought of Dan Brown’s dreams coming true, it’s secular thinking scholars. Scholars with no dog in the fight!

Just one of the specific problems is the difficulty of reading the names on the ossuaries which are overcome by excellent animated black and white letters morphing out of the illegible scrawling. Lately one of the Tomb’s own scholars has questioned some of the translation that he helped to decipher.

The other problem with this is that they link the name “Mariamne” with Mary Magdelene. But, Mariamne is never used for Mary before the 4th century. This means that there is a great anachronism with the 4th century name being placed on a 1st century tomb (which still isn’t legible).

Additionally when they calculate the statistics they include the James ossuary (which has already been shown to be a fraud) as a factor – but they didn’t even find this ossuary with the tomb! After testing they found that the limestone with the James ossuary was consistent with the others and not with a small sampling group. Even the show’s journalist Simcha Jacobovici admitted the sampling was too small. So, we have limestone from Jerusalem used in a Jerusalem tomb, convincing isn’t it?

Some have gone so far as to state that this is an archaeological non-event. And I’ve probably already wasted too much space on this topic. But, there are some (and some of you have talked to me) who have some serious questions about this. I think for now we can all rest assured that this tomb poses no great threat to Christianity, maybe we should now go find something useful to do. Like help someone in need!