Lee Iacocca once asked legendary football coach Vince Lombardi what it took to make a winning team. The book Iacocca records Lombardi's answer: "There are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but still don't win the game. Then you come to the third ingredient: if you're going to play together as a team, you've got to care for one another. You've got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself: 'If I don't block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I have to do my job well in order that he can do his.'

"The difference between mediocrity and greatness," Lombardi said that night, "is the feeling these guys have for each other." In the healthy church, each Christian learns to care for others. As we take seriously Jesus' command to "love one another," we contribute to a winning team.

-- Christopher Stinnett, Wailed Lake, Michigan. Leadership, Vol. 15, no. 3.

We are seeing the simplicity of following Christ. It’s not a bunch of rules and regulations. It’s a relationship with Jesus that results in loving God and living others.

This second commandment flows out of the first. One leads to the other. Jesus made this connect by using the same word for love in both verses. Also the connection is seen by Him referring to both as commandments.

For you to love God automatically flows that you will love people.

A love for God that does not result in an automatic, passionate, and authentic love for people is dead, useless and hypocritical.

This kind of love does not come from within you, but above. From God.

Galatians 5: 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

John 13: 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

John 15: 12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

John 15: 17 "These things I command you, that you love one another."

You can command love because love is not an act of the emotions but it comes out of who you are and the choices you make.

When you discover some of the people God commands you to love, it will take an act of the will.

Matthew 5:44 "But I say to you, love your enemies,"

Matthew 5: 46 "For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?"

We are not to be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word. We are to act out – live out our faith.

Ephesians 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

How do we love others?

I will obey those in authority over me: parents, boss, governmental authorities, the spiritual leaders in the church

I won’t steal from others, won’t covet what they have, won’t kill each other, won’t sleep with your wife or husband, won’t lie to you thus basing our relationship on deception.

In the rendering of the Great Commandment in Luke 10, there is a question posed "Who is my neighbor?" We want it qualified so we can exclude some people. Jesus’ answer was what we call the Parable of the Good Samaritan in which he renounces the barriers that separate people.

This kind of love:

Erases insensitivity – you will notice and your heart will be moved.

And this kind of love will break through the barriers and excuses of:

1. Race – a Jew ignored a Jew. But a Samaritan helped a Jew. The Pharisees were so narrow minded that they did not include all Jews in their circle of acquaintances.

2. Religion – I Corinthians 13 reminds us that we can have the faith to move mountains but if we don’t have love, we are nothing.

3. Geography – has nothing to do with who is living next door to you

4. Previous relationship – you don’t even have to know the person

5. Cultural - A man was speaking to a woman in public.

A God-kind of love will challenge all the barriers that have been placed between us and love will tear them down.

Matthew 7:12 "Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the prophets."

If every word you spoke to others you knew was coming back to you, would it make a difference?

If every action toward others would be coming back to you, would you be kinder?

Of course.

We need to treat others like we’d want to be treated. Don’t talk about them but talk to them. Give others the benefit of the doubt. Don’t believe everything you hear about others – in fact, don’t believe anything. Give grace. Be patient. Forget the short comings and faults of others quickly. Be kind. Don’t use people for your gain.

John 13: 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."