Moses came down from Mount Sinai with two tablets of stone in his hand. On one were written the first four commandments that dealt with man's relationship with God. On the other were written the other six commandments that dealt with man's relationship with his fellow-men.

The Lord Jesus said that these two tablets could be summed up in two commandments. The first, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind;" and the second, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." (Matt. 22:37-39).

Jesus emphasised these two in the prayer that He taught as well. The first three petitions relate to the first commandment. And the next three petitions relate to the second commandment, as amplified by Jesus in the new commandment that He gave His disciples, when He said, "Love one another even as I have loved you" (John. 13:34).

A true disciple of Jesus seeks to be perfectly centred in God in his conscious and unconscious being - with every desire of his, perfectly in tune with God; and with no desire, ambition or feeling outside the will of God for his life. At the same time, he also seeks to love his brothers perfectly, as Jesus loved him.

He is however perpetually aware that his attitude is not as perfect as it should be in these two directions. But he keeps working towards that goal, always willing to pay any price in order to get there.

To love our brothers is to have a concern for them. We cannot have a concern for everybody in the world. Only God has that capacity. But according to our capacity, we should have a concern for our fellow-believers; and that capacity should keep increasing.

We don't start off like this. The first step is to love the members of our family at home as Jesus loved us. But we don't stop there. We move forward seeking to love our brothers and sisters in the family of God also as Jesus loved us.

Perfection is a goal to press on towards. But we should be determined to reach it. That's the direction in which Paul was going when he said, "One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13,14). The upward call of God is to become perfectly centred in God, to love God supremely and to love our fellow-believers as Jesus loved us and to love our neighbours as ourselves.