The Greatest Commandment: Confession Of An Unprofitable Servant

Feature 2 – July/August 2010 – Grace & Truth Magazine

The Greatest Commandment:
Confession Of An Unprofitable Servant

Those who count all the commandments in the Law of Moses find a total of 613. This strange number is best understood if we note that 6+1+3 = 10! In other words, we might conclude that all the Law is summarized in the Ten Commandments. But the Son of God went even further, teaching that the whole Law is summed up in two: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Mt. 22:37 KJV ), and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mt. 22:39). These two commandments are so intertwined that the Lord described them as being one commandment, saying, “There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mk. 12:31).

Clearly, 613 commandments made the Law impossible to keep. Even the Ten Commandments were enough to disqualify everyone aspiring to eternal life. But if the criteria were only two, would not millions tumble into the kingdom? Not a chance! Not one soul got into Paradise by good works. For the obligatory pre-condition of perfect love meant that everyone was equally doomed to fail.

The Greatest Is Love
In the Greatest Commandment (Mk. 12:30-31), love is the common factor towards God and our fellows. There is not a man or woman who has been totally faithful to this divine decree, except the Man, Christ Jesus, described as God “manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). He obeyed His own commandment to the uttermost (Jn. 3:16; Heb. 7:25). Because “God is love” and “love is of God” (1 Jn. 4:7-8) it is only God who could observe His own commandment to the last jot and tittle. As for us, we can only marvel that this same God has forgiven our failures more times than we can remember.

The commandments regarding loving God and our neighbors have come directly from the mouth of God. As the Law came through Moses he could do no more than repeat what God had told him. Likewise in John’s gospel the “new commandment” (Jn. 13:34) came directly from God’s mouth. That is to say any further exhortations by the apostles were only recitations of what they had learned from the lips of the Master. So John, in his final years, could write “this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another” (1 Jn. 3:23). If John were directing his readers to obey their Lord (1 Jn. 4:7) he was only exhorting, not commanding. Therefore the principle of “His commandment” remained intact. John revealed this universal, indiscriminate love of God for all mankind, when he wrote that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:16).

Do we really understand God’s love of every living soul, and His willingness to forgive and forget through the gospel? Where is this consistency when evangelists preaching God’s love for sinners do not themselves even love all the saints? Is it not time that we all confessed that we are “guilty as charged, Lord”? So the first lesson to emerge is that the Greatest Commandment is not only the hardest, but also the most impossible to keep. But this does not justify our failure. For God never relaxes His standards to accommodate mortal offenders. Rather, His immutable standard takes away all self-glorifying and pious boastings of smug believers.

In all honesty, there is no way to love every neighbor as ourselves. Apart from our inbuilt fallibility, we have no plans to show unfeigned favor to all. Even in the days of Moses, the commandment demanded impartial love towards Israelite and non-Israelite – neighbor and foreigner. And if this were not impossible enough, God then added that we should love each of them as much as we love ourselves (Lev. 19:18,34).

So are we now ready to confess that to date we’ve only managed to love ourselves with any consistency? And the problem expands when we project the principle nationally and internationally. In the light of the much-quoted John 3:16 do we indeed love every one in our neighborhood, state, nation and all other nations, including those who want to exterminate us?

Divine Love of Justice
The Old Testament did not forbid Israel’s prosecuting evil, nor did it allow dangerous criminals to prey upon defenseless citizens. Also, the chosen people did not give up their right to defend themselves against hostile nations. In fact, under God’s direction Israel was compelled to make war with her enemies (Josh. 8:18). Yet war proved the commandment broken. When men kill in combat, at least one of the warring parties has sinned in hatred. And within each nation there are home-born enemies. So God’s love did not prevent the Lord’s avenging Himself at home and abroad. Even today God remains at war with sin. The sword of God remains unsheathed against criminals and evildoers (Rom. 13:4).

From these examples we begin to understand Paul’s statement that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Paul applies it both nationally and internationally when he says of Jew and Gentile that “they are all under sin” (Rom. 3:9). In other words, God established this just standard that He might convict the whole world of sin. For if the whole Law is summarized in two commandments then the whole world has broken the whole Law by failing to keep any one of them! So “because the Law worketh wrath” (Rom. 4:15), the whole world must flee to Christ who “is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone that believeth” (Rom. 10:4).

The Love-Obedience Quotient
As God must have preeminence, the first part of the commandment is to love God. Will someone not protest this way: “I love God. I sing like an angel and pray like a nun. I’ve read my Bible from Genesis to Revelation. I pay my taxes to God and man. I worship and preach with all my heart. I can recite all the creeds and commandments. I am a lexicon of Hebrew and Greek. I know it’s difficult to be humble when one is great, but in all modesty, I am a lovely Christian.”

By what shekel of the sanctuary shall we measure this self-professed marvel of grace? Rather is he or she not just too good to be true? And what of the Scripture that says “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15:22)? Do we not remember that when the wise men saw the young Child, they “fell down, and worshiped Him; and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (Mt. 2:11)? While all this was seemingly good, yet after “being warned by God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way” (Mt. 2:12).

In other words, of what value was their worship or their gifts if these wise men had then disobeyed God’s warning and gone back to Herod? We see that our adoring of God must be complemented by our obedience to His commandments. John wrote, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 Jn. 4:20).

A New Commandment
In this connection the Son of God stated, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments” (Jn. 14:15). So each can say, “How easy it is to love my wonderful Lord who has died to save me, and has snatched me as a brand from the fire. I adore my irresistible Savior who loved me and gave Himself for me. But there are times I could slap that brother (or sister) who irks me!”

Does not the Son of God measure love by degrees of obedience? He said, “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him” (Jn. 14:21). What about this? “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another” (Jn. 13:34-35). And this: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments” (1 Jn. 5:2).

If Moses commanded Israel to love God and their neighbors without success, what of this new commandment of Christ? Who is going to love his brother or sister as much as our beloved Savior loves us? His love “never faileth” (1 Cor. 13:8) though the sun rises and sets and the moon waxes and wanes. How then can we possibly emulate the intensity and immensity of the love which compelled the Son of God to leave heaven to die for wretches like us? As the New Testament is “a better covenant” than the Old (Heb. 8:6), then the new commandment of Christ is superior to the Law of Moses. “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second” (Heb. 8:7). In other words, since the Law of Moses was beyond the ability of the Old Testament elite, how shall we keep the great commandment of “the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus” (Heb. 3:1)?

Love In Action
Whereas we have so far humbled ourselves before God, yet the New Testament abounds with examples of saintly imitation of God’s love. It would be a great injustice to accuse every saint of consistent failure. So while we are hardly likely to equal the heights of the love of 1 Corinthians 13, yet we have all had moments of success. So we conclude our confession by being reminded of a few believers who loved God and their neighbors with distinction. These simple people from the New Testament performed great acts of love towards God and man:

• The leper who returned to worship the Savior who healed him (Lk. 17:16-18).
• The other Mary who washed the Lord’s feet with her tears and dried them with her hair (Lk. 7:38).
• The man born blind who lived to see the One who opened his eyes, and said, “Lord, I believe,” and worshiped Him (Jn. 9:38).
• The destitute widow who gave all that she had to the poor (Mk. 12:42-44).
• The men who carried the palsied man to the feet of the Lord (Mk. 2:4).
• Martha, Mary and Lazarus who opened their door to the Master and His disciples at a time when the Jews threatened excommunication (Jn. 12:2).

One Last Thought
John, the disciple beloved of Jesus, wrote, “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 Jn. 3:16). This second “John 3:16” dovetails beautifully with the first, for the imitation of Christ is the highest form of love expressible to God and man.

By Tom Summerhill