Becoming a Great Commandment Christian – Part I

Centering the Christian Faith on the Love of God and Neighbour. 

In a time when Christianity is often used to justify division, power, and partisanship, I found myself asking: What does it truly mean to follow Jesus? For me, the answer came not through a new theology or denomination, but through a return to something ancient, radical, and profoundly simple—Jesus’s summary of the law: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37–39).

In an age where Christianity is often co-opted by power, partisanship, and exclusion, becoming a Great Commandment Christian felt like a way home. Not a retreat from orthodoxy, but a return to the heart of the Gospel: love for God and love for neighbor.

After all, it was Jesus’s own way of summarizing the faith. It seemed simple enough to understand and clear enough to follow. At its heart, this identity brings together God’s holy love—holiness, righteousness, justice, sanctification—and love itself, not in tension but in unity.

To become a Great Commandment Christian is to allow this two-fold command to become the interpretive lens for everything else: Scripture, theology, church life, ethics, and personal discipleship. This identity is not a dilution of orthodoxy, but a distillation of it. It brings together God’s holiness and God’s love, transcendent and immanent, into a single call to live in communion with Him and in compassion toward others.

Yet being a Great Commandment Christian doesn’t simplify the faith. It raises the bar. It requires a more demanding and holistic form of discipleship. Rather than offering easy answers or rigid systems imposed from the outside, it calls for spiritual formation and spiritual disciplines that shape us from within.

The 613 commandments in the Old Covenant symbolized God’s desire for holiness to permeate every aspect of life, yet Jesus distilled the essence of holiness into one requirement: love God and love neighbor. The Great Commandment unites holiness and love in a way that reframes our discipleship, not as rule-keeping, but as transformation.

This way of being Christian offers not simplicity, but clarity; not withdrawal, but engagement; not ideological tribalism, but spiritual renewal. This essay is both testimony and theological reflection. It is the story of leaving behind an increasingly politicized evangelicalism and walking toward a faith rooted in the Great Commandment. My aim is to clarify what this identity entails, how it differs from what many have walked away from, and why it offers a faithful path forward in our divided age.

The Call: What It Means to Be a Great Commandment Christian

Becoming a Great Commandment Christian raises the bar, not lowers it. It demands a discipleship shaped by formation, not fear; by love, not legalism. This identity rests on three core convictions:

1. Diversity Is a Divine Design

From Genesis to Revelation, God’s vision has never been for a monolithic people, but for a richly diverse, covenantal community. The “mixed multitude” that left Egypt (Exodus 12:38) was not an accident—it was evidence that the people of God were always meant to include those from many nations, cultures, and backgrounds who chose to follow God.

This vision is echoed in the ministry of Jesus, who welcomed Samaritans, Romans, Canaanites, and tax collectors. It culminates in the apocalyptic image of a people “from every nation, tribe, and language” gathered around the throne (Revelation 7:9). Diversity is not a concession to modernity—it is foundational to biblical faith.

2. Scripture Requires Humble Interpretation

While I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, I also acknowledge that human interpretation is fallible. History shows us how Scripture has been misused to justify racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and violence. Being a Great Commandment Christian means holding Scripture with reverence—but also with humility.

It means asking not just, Is this biblical?, but also, Does this interpretation align with love of God and neighbor? We must read the Bible not as a weapon to wield, but as a window into God’s redemptive love.

3. The Spirit Empowers Us to Follow Jesus

The Christian life cannot be sustained by rules alone. Jesus promised the Spirit to guide, convict, comfort, and empower. Without the Spirit, we fall into ideology or rigidity; with the Spirit, we are formed into the image of Christ.

A Great Commandment Christian relies on the Spirit to discern how to love in complex times—to love neighbors across political, racial, and theological divides, and to love God not merely with words, but with justice, mercy, and humility.

The Crisis: Why I Walked Away

For much of my life, I identified with white evangelicalism. I affirmed the authority of Scripture, the saving work of Jesus, and the centrality of the Gospel. But over time, I began to experience a growing dissonance between the faith I knew in Scripture and the faith I witnessed in American church culture. What was popularized on TV and in social media.

At first, it was theological: I rejected the notion that one had to choose between personal salvation and social justice. To me, these were two sides of the same coin—Jesus not only saves souls but heals systems. The response I heard was often dismissive: “Why polish the brass on a sinking ship?”

But the deeper rupture came when I saw large segments of the church not only abandon justice, but embrace fear and political power. I heard people say that becoming Christian meant becoming Republican—as though sanctification followed a partisan path. I saw crosses and flags raised together as if Jesus had come to save a nation, not the world.

Eventually, I no longer recognized this version of Christianity. But neither did I know what I was becoming.

The Search: Naming a New Identity

Evangelicalism had once offered a middle path between the rigidity of fundamentalism and the looseness of liberalism. But now, new categories were emerging: Neo-Evangelical, Post-Evangelical, Ex-Evangelical, Deconstructionist.

A friend of mine, a Black Christian, shared that he no longer calls himself “Christian” because the word has become too distorted. “People don’t know if I mean a Donald Trump Christian or a Joe Biden Christian,” he said. “So I just say I’m the hopes and dreams of my ancestors.”

I tried on different labels—Lausanne Covenant Christian, Evangelical Refugee—but none fit. Then it came to me: I am a Great Commandment Christian. That name didn’t define me by what I left, but by what I embraced.

The Framework: Reading Scripture Through the Great Commandment

Once I adopted this identity, everything shifted. The Great Commandment became the lens through which I understood Scripture, and Scripture became the map showing that this journey wasn’t new—it was always God’s plan.

A Mixed Multitude at Sinai

Exodus 12 tells us that a “mixed multitude” left Egypt. This included Hebrews, Egyptians, Semitic tribes, and likely other African and Asiatic peoples who had settled in Egypt. They saw the power of Israel’s God and chose to follow.

This wasn’t just a historical footnote. It was the foundation of Israel’s national identity. When the law was given at Sinai, it was given to a community already marked by ethnic and social diversity.

Covenant, Not Bloodline

The law explicitly rejected ethnic superiority. In Exodus 12:49: “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” Leviticus 19:34 commands, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself.”

Biblical identity was never defined by race or nationality. It was covenantal.

The Practice: From Theological Principle to Daily Discipleship

Being a Great Commandment Christian is not a retreat into sentimentality. It’s a call to radical obedience. It means:

• Loving our literal and metaphorical neighbors—including immigrants, political enemies, and those outside our theological comfort zones.

• Reading Scripture in community, with humility and curiosity, not as a means of control but as a wellspring of truth.

• Yielding to the Spirit’s work in shaping us toward mercy, justice, and joy.

It means resisting a Christianity centered on grievance, fear, or cultural dominance—and choosing instead a faith rooted in grace, humility, and neighborly love.

The Journey

It’s easy to point out what people are walking away from, but harder to define what they are walking toward. This is my story—not just of leaving, but of becoming: a journey that moves through Egypt and the Exodus, through Mount Sinai and Pentecost, through evangelicalism and beyond. For many stepping away from white Evangelicalism, it was painfully clear what they were leaving behind—a politicized faith, a culture-war mindset, a Christianity entangled with nationalism and power. What was less clear, and what I seek to name here, is what they were becoming: a people rooted in empathy and grace, not in fear but in love.

Conclusion: The Road Ahead

This is the faith I now claim—not as a rejection of Jesus, but as a deeper return to Him. Not as a deconstruction of faith, but as a reconstruction of its foundation. A faith that resists being hijacked by nationalism or partisanship. A faith not defined by what it’s against, but by who it is becoming—with Jesus at the center, and love as its measure.

To be a Great Commandment Christian is to reimagine the Church not as a fortress of purity, but as a fellowship of grace. It is believed that orthodoxy and justice, holiness and hospitality, tradition and transformation can coexist in love. It is to see diversity not as a threat, but as the very beauty of the Kingdom. And it is to walk forward, not in fear, but in faith.

This is my journey. This is the way of the Great Commandment.