Our mission is to love God, love each other, and love the world Jesus sends us to serve.

This mission is rooted deeply in the Bible, which tells us how a loving God transforms us into loving people. Because God loves us so much, three times the Bible says, "And you shall love."

Loving God
The first is in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, a famous passage that says, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." The ancients knew these were profound words, and Jesus himself confirmed it, calling this the greatest commandment.

Loving Each Other
But Jesus said there is a second dimension to this command that is inseparable from the first. Quoting Leviticus 19:18 he said not only must you love God but "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." God created us as communal creatures. If we don't honor that by taking care of each other, we're not honoring him.

So: "Love God and love your neighbor." Sounds nice, doesn't it? Especially if your neighbor is a happy, well-adjusted person who doesn't require much real attention.

Loving the World
But that's where the third "And you shall love" comes in. Leviticus 19:34 says, "You shall treat the stranger who sojourns among you as the native-born, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God." The stranger is the foreigner and outsider, the poor and distressed, the person with whom you have no natural connection except your common humanity. God says that when you love that one, then you know my kind of love.

And so we connect these commands. The ancient rabbis had a principle called gezerah sheva that involved linking Scriptures in which the same key phrase appears. The idea is that we link them because they are linked in the mind of God. And there's no phrase more significant than "And you shall love." Jesus called it a summary of the entire Bible.

So we have this purpose, looking to Jesus himself to empower its fulfillment. When we were estranged from God, he came to love and serve us, bearing our sins on the cross and blazing a path to life by his resurrection. Now everyone can know and show God's love. You're welcome to join in.