I’m in the third week of this series, “Essential Truths for All Times.” I want to punctuate the end of my tenure with some foundational truths that must never be compromised. We have established that essential to our faith is the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord and that holiness is core to who we are as we live out the confession that Christ is Lord. A third essential of our faith is adherence to the Great Commandments. They are lifted by Jesus as the greatest commandments in the Law.
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.
That was a lot of rules keeping, wasn’t it? That would be mentally and emotionally exhausting. How could you nurture your spiritual life if you had to be focused on 613 rules? Be wary of complicated religion, folks. Wherever you find hoops to jump through in order to follow Jesus you won’t be walking in the paths of grace, freedom and power that He has established for us.
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?
Let’s look at this commandment to love God with our heart, soul and mind. In Matthew 22 Jesus was actually quoting from Deuteronomy 6, from what the Jewish people call the Shema. Every orthodox Jew knew the Shema by heart. It was recited daily. The word, “Shema,” comes from the Hebrew word which means “to hear”. The Shema in Deuteronomy 6 is important stuff. We need to hear what God was saying and to listen up as Jesus reiterated what was of ultimate importance.
In Deuteronomy 6:4-9 we read the Shema which includes what Jesus says is the greatest of all the commandments. 4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets (a decorative band worn on the forehead) between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
When you read these verses, you get a sense, even pre-Jesus, of how essential these verses are. We read that this commandment to love God with all of your heart, soul, and strength is so important it should be memorized. It should be passed down to your children. Like we have a responsibility to make sure they know this is numero uno. There should be conversations happening about it. When you sit at the dinner table, one topic of discussion is supposed to be, “How have you loved God today?”
It is so important that reminders to keep love for God at the forefront of your life are supposed to be tied like jewelry on your wrists and are supposed to be attached to your forehead like a headband. This command is supposed to be the first thing people see when they look at you. They are to see that you love God with everything that is in you. This command to keep love for God aflame in your hearts is to be written on the doorposts of your home and on your gates so people who pass by will understand that someone who loves God lives there.
That doesn’t sound like a private, covert kind of love for God, does it. In other words, love for God is supposed to be on display in our lives, and we are supposed to remind ourselves constantly that loving Him is our highest priority.
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. (Honestly, it ties back to the first essential truth that Jesus Christ is Lord.)
Back to Jesus and the question that was asked by one of the experts in the Law about which commandment was the greatest. That man wasn’t really interested in the answer. He was interested in trapping Jesus. The teachers of the Law saw each law as having equal weight and importance, so the guy was trying to get Jesus to single one out thinking he would force Him into some kind of heresy. Jesus knew what He was up to.
At the same time, 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.
That is the essence of the Old Testament Shema. If you love God correctly, your life will glorify Him. 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. I mean, “What if you forgot one of the 613 laws? What if you accidentally do something just beyond the line? There is no flexibility with the Law. It’s black and white. Rigid and fixed. You are either innocent or guilty.
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. I don’t know about you, but I would rather have the Holy Spirit teach me and tell me what to do than the Law force me into a way of behaving that doesn’t take into consideration any extenuating circumstances. I would rather have the Holy Spirit live in me and work with me than the Law stand as my judge and jury.
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. Isn’t that what we want with our children? Oh, those early years it is all Law, isn’t it? I remember having small children. May days were filled with sentences like, “Don’t do that. Quit touching that. Move away from there. Stop licking that. I said No. Don’t make me say it again. Don’t, don’t, don’t.” And we expect obedience because we are the authority in our child’s life. And we expect obedience because we have laid down the Law, and because quite frankly, we are bigger than they are. But as our children grow, we desire compliance not just because we are the authority in our kids’ lives but because the love between us has grown to the place where our kids truly want to do what we are lining out because they have come to trust us, because they have placed confidence in us and actually believe we know what is best. Isn’t that what God wants for us as His children?
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! Anyone know what I am talking about?
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 with the Shema. He didn’t stop with our love for God. He coupled the Greatest commandment with the Second Greatest Commandment. In Matthew 22:39, Jesus reached back to Leviticus 19:18 where it was commanded that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The first commandment flows into the second. 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.
The Leviticus 19 passage really has to do with how we are to live in community with other people. In that chapter, people are told that when they harvest their fields, they aren’t to gather the harvest from border to border. They aren’t to go over the field with a fine-toothed comb to make sure they get every speck of grain. They are to intentionally leave some for the hungry, for the poor, for the traveler. Why? Love is considerate. Love thinks of others. Love seeks to find ways to meet people’s needs.
There are words there that talk about paying laborers upon the completion of their work and not even keeping their pay overnight, about showing value to them. The chapter talks about acting justly with people and not showing partiality for any reason; about not seeking vengeance or holding grudges, but that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.
As God established the relationship with His people, He didn’t leave out the relationship they would have with others, and Jesus reiterated both principles in Matthew 22. 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.
This double love, this love for God and others is the essence of the Ten Commandments. When you study the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 you will see that the first four commandments deal with our relationship to God. God is established as THE God we worship. We aren’t to have idols in our lives that could threaten our love-relationship with God. Our love for God is to be devoted to Him. We can’t have equal love for God and something or someone else. The way we love Him and invest in that relationship and demonstrate that relationship is supposed to supersede any other love. We aren’t to be loose with God’s name. The casual or flippant “Oh my God” expression that is common in our culture shouldn’t be common for us as Christ-followers. When you love someone, you talk about them carefully and with respect and honor. We are to maintain a day of worship just to focus on our love for God. When you love someone, you set aside time to spend with them. So, the first four commandments deal with our love for God.
But the last six which would be the majority of the commandments, deal with how we treat our neighbor, with how we love others. Honoring our parents will flow from our love and commitment to God. Family was God’s idea. Adding to our families was His idea. Extended family was His idea. How we treat those relationships matters to God and is part of this second commandment. Valuing life as a gift and refraining from killing anyone whether in the womb or in some frail physical condition will flow from our love for God. He is the Creator and Author of all life. Not committing adultery, which means not disrespecting our marital relationship and marital partner, will flow from our love for God. His covenant of love with us is an example of what our covenant should look like with our spouse. Just as our love for God is to be exclusive, so is our love for our spouse.
When we love God, we won’t steal from people. We will respect that someone has worked hard to earn what they have, and we won’t diminish their hard work by taking what we didn’t earn. When we love God, we won’t lie because there is no deception, no falsehood in God. There is no pure love without honesty. We won’t covet what other people have because we will learn to be content with what is ours. We will rejoice with those who have been blessed, and we will wait for and look for God’s blessing in our lives.
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. Jesus combined the Shema with the laws of Leviticus to restore the balance that had been lost by the rigid, judgmental religious elite. The Greatest Commandment can’t really exist without the Second Greatest Commandment.
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.
On another occasion when Jesus was asked a question about eternal life, He pointed the listener back to the Greatest and Second Greatest Commandments. Listen to the dialogue from Luke 10:25-29: 25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” 29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
The guy had the correct answer. He already understood from the Law how He could gain eternal life, which by the way, is the purpose of the Law. It was meant to point us to a relationship with God through Christ. He had gotten the message, but he hadn’t taken it to heart. He asked Jesus in the very next verse, “Who is my neighbor?” Really? It sounds to me as if he was looking for a loophole. It couldn’t be a simple as Jesus had confirmed it really was, but living it out? Why that didn’t sound simple. Is everyone my neighbor?
Well, if you know Luke 10, you know it contains the Parable of the Good Samaritan where a Jewish man is robbed and beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite, both Jews, pass by the Jewish man and don’t stop to help him. They continue with their agenda, unmoved by the man’s trouble, unmoved by his impending death, they just kept walking. A Samaritan, someone the Jews considered to be an enemy and vice versa, that Samaritan happened by the man and saw his need. Well, actually, not just one need, but many needs. Not just immediate needs, but long-term needs, and he took responsibility for the man. He got him to safety. He paid for his care. He took his time. He was willing to check back and to do whatever was needed to make sure the man could recover.
In the telling of this parable Jesus was explaining that love has no limits, no qualifiers, no boundaries. Mercy doesn’t need a reason to act. We don’t love up to a certain point and then quit loving if we love as God in Christ has loved us. There are no loopholes with love. The man was looking for a loophole, for wiggle room. Just “who” qualified to be his neighbor? How many people was he going to have to love? How far would his love have to reach for him to feel good enough to mark off some legalistic box? Jesus said it went beyond the love we have for family, beyond the love we have for friends, beyond the love we have for acquaintances and extended all the way to love for our enemies.
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?
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