Matthew 22:34-40 34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
This question about which was the most important commandment was one that had been debated for hundreds of years. There were 613 commandments in the Law. How could anyone keep track of all of that? I can hardly keep track of my car keys! Actually, it is my cell phone that always seems to go into hiding. I wonder how many times a month I say, “Thom, call my phone?” I digress. Of those 613 commandments, 365 were negative commands. They were “Thou shalt not” commands which left 248 as positive commands. They were the “Thou shalts.” So, there were 365 stated things you shouldn’t do, perhaps one for each day of the year, and 248 stated things you should do.
Jesus boiled all 613 commands into two commandments. And here’s the thing, they weren’t new commandments. Deuteronomy 6 spoke about the love people are to have for God, and Leviticus 19:18 had commanded people to love their neighbor as they loved themselves. This was old stuff that Jesus framed in a new way. For example, Jesus said in John 13:34, “A NEW command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” But the command to love wasn’t a new command. The command to love was simply qualified: “As Christ has loved us,” that was the new standard for the demonstration of love. If you use Christ as your measuring stick for the way to love God and others, a whole lot changes, doesn’t it?
Loving God isn’t about having good feelings toward Him or even admiration for all He has created or admiration for how He has worked in human history. It isn’t just about recognizing Him in an act of worship once or twice a week. True love for God involves a full submission of our hearts and wills. It is the preoccupation of our coming and going every day, it is a focus in our conversation, and it will work its way into our decision-making and behavior as we relate with others.
Jesus knew it was impossible to live by the Letter of the Law. Jesus even violated the Letter of the Law by healing people on the Sabbath. No one could keep 613 commandments to the Letter of the Law. Jesus knew as well that it wasn’t the Letter of the Law that was of utmost importance. It was the Spirit of the Law that was supreme, and the Spirit of the Law could be summed up in loving God with our heart, soul, and mind. If that was our highest aim, appropriate actions would follow. The Law was there to guide people’s actions until people’s hearts could be transformed by the Spirit to know what was appropriate.
If you love God correctly, obeying Him will be a joy and a delight. The religious leaders demanded the Law be followed. Jesus said, “Follow Me.” Jesus said, “Love God the way I do. Obey God the way I do. With everything you have, seek to know and love God. If you do, the way you live will be under His control.” Wouldn’t you rather be controlled by the Spirit of God than the Letter of the Law? The religious leaders had a relationship and preoccupation with the Law. Jesus had a relationship and preoccupation with God.
The Law is unbending and unforgiving. The Law brings condemnation and guilt. The Law doesn’t leave room for mercy, but a relationship with God is full of compassion and mercy, forgiveness and grace, and power to do the right thing even if it violates the Letter of the Law. In other words, God is greater than the Law. The Law just points us to our need for something greater, Someone greater, Someone full of grace and truth.
People who have a love relationship with religious laws will be focused on hoop jumping, I-dotting, T-crossing, and technically “right” living. They will have an exhausting, unending, anxiety-producing kind of life. But people who have a love relationship with God will be focused on heart-to-heart interaction, on compassion, on grace and mercy against the backdrop of truth. It will be a dynamic, breathing, growing and empowering kind of life. It won’t be about innocence or guilt, but it will be about a willingness of heart. The Law is imposed on you from without. Love for God is imprinted on you from within. The Law moves on us, but Jesus moves in us when we love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength.
Jesus doesn’t want a relationship with us that is based on the Law. He wants a relationship with us that is based on love. Love grows trust and confidence. If we apply that to our spiritual lives, we can say, “Love grows our faith.” Love becomes our motivation. When a parent-child relationship is healthy, children grow in their love for their parents. For parents, the love is instant. When you see that child’s smushed up face and wrinkly, slimy skin, and hold that baby for the first time, that kid could look like ET, but you are in love beyond anything you can describe. It is immediate. You don’t even choose to love that baby. You just do because the child is yours!
But babies, toddlers, and children, learn to love as they learn to trust and rely on their parents. In time you will see them demonstrate behaviors that melt your heart, and it isn’t because you taught them to do exactly what they are doing or that they are scared of what will happen if they do the wrong thing, but it is because out of love for you they desire to demonstrate what begins to bring you delight. Do you see? The more you love and understand love and focus on loving deeply, the more you will demonstrate behavior that is consistent with love, and it will delight the heart of God. That is why Jesus said that loving God with all you have is the most important thing you can do.
But Jesus didn’t stop didn’t stop with our love for God. He coupled the Greatest commandment with the Second Greatest Commandment. Our first love for God gets extended to our love for other people. The principle is simple: If we love God, we will love others. The greatest demonstration of our love for God isn’t done in the church house when we lift our hands in worship or bend our knees to pray or send an electronic payment during the time of the offering, but it is when we lift others up, when we stoop to serve others, and when we show love to others in practical ways.
In essence, you can’t get it right with God but get it wrong with others, and you can’t get it wrong with others and claim to have gotten it right with God. We read in 1 John 4:20-21, 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
When Jesus answered the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” why didn’t He stop with one answer? Why didn’t He just leave it with, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength?” Why did He give a bigger answer than He was asked to give? The easy answer is that we always get more from Jesus than we ask of Him. However, I think there is another answer. The religious leaders had lost the balance that was to have always existed. Loving God meant loving others. It was always supposed to be that way.
Paul summed it up well in Romans 13:8-10 8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
In Matthew 22, after Jesus said the first and greatest commandment was to love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength, and the second was to love your neighbor as yourself, He concluded His answer with this incredible statement: 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” What? You mean that 611 other commandments hinge on us devoting ourselves to these two commandments? Should this have been welcomed news? Was this a life-changing statement or what?
If you had been taught you had to keep 613 do’s and don’ts in mind every day and be careful not to violate one of those 613 do’s and don’ts and Jesus comes on the scene to say everything can be summed up in just two do’s, how much would that simplify your life? Wouldn’t that be awesome? I guess you could say that Jesus had a “two-do” list before anyone thought of making one up!
Notice that Jesus didn’t discount the other 611 commandments, making them unimportant or of no consequence. He didn’t fall for the trap. He just said if you do the Greatest Commandment and the Second Greatest Commandment, all of the rest are taken care of. Whew! What a weight off. What liberating words!
When we put the greatest commandment and the second greatest commandment together, we come up with the Great Commandment, so really, we just have to remember one thing, the Great Commandment.
The two beams of the Cross remind us of the Great Commandment. The vertical one reminds us of God’s love for us and our love for Him. On the cross, Jesus went all in to demonstrate God’s love for us. We have an opportunity to love Him back in the same way. The vertical beam symbolizes our need to be connected, caring, and compassionate. It moves us outward to love others in ways that sometimes test our patience and even our faith. To stretch out from the cross is to sacrifice and serve to reveal God’s love to other people.
So that’s it. Central and essential to who we are as Jesus’ people is that we love God, and we love others the way He has loved us. Can we do the “two-do” list Jesus has assigned to us?
