Love and Loyalty

The direction of our loves determines the direction of our lives.We were made to love God, but we spend much of our lives searching for other things to love instead. Jesus’s commands in these verses all relate to our loves and our loyalties: the things we value display what we love (6:19–21), the things we love will influence every part of our lives (6:22–23), and our loves will determine our allegiance to a single ruler (6:24). Jesus knew something many of us ignore about ourselves: that our lives are determined more by our loves and loyalties than by the beliefs we claim to hold in our minds. We may say and think that Jesus is Lord, but we need to examine what our hearts love to understand where our allegiance lies.