The Greatest Commandment: Message, Meaning, Application

Feature 1 – July/August 2010 – Grace & Truth Magazine

The Greatest Commandment:
Message, Meaning, Application

Always eager for a good theological debate, a teacher of the Law watched Jesus defeat a challenge from some cynical Sadducees, and decided to engage the controversial Rabbi with a challenge of his own. We hope his motive was nobler than that of the Sadducees who only wanted to trap or embarrass Jesus. At any rate, Jesus gave him (and us) some food for serious thought.

Message
The teacher of the Law asked, “Of all the commandments (there were hundreds on the rabbinical books at the time), which is the most important?”

Jesus actually gave him two wrapped up as one: “The most important ... one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ (Dt. 6:4-5). The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Lev. 19:18). There is no commandment greater than these” (Mk. 12:28-31). Matthew records Jesus’ concluding statement this way: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Mt. 22:40 NIV).

The Deuteronomy part of Jesus’ answer comes from a context that reiterates the Ten Commandments (Dt. 5:1-22). This short creed was well-known among devout Jews as the “Shema” – and they recited it each morning and evening. The word shema comes from the first word of the statement: “Hear (sh’ma), O Israel.” It captures the thrust of the first four of the Ten Commandments, which govern man’s attitudes and behavior toward God – the vertical relationship.

By adding a further command from another passage, Jesus modified and updated the shema from mere ritual, and difficult-to-define religious precept, to a very practical, observable and measurable lifestyle requirement. His addition condenses the thrust of commandments five through ten, which govern attitudes and behavior among people – the horizontal relationship. Author Scot McKnight refers to this revised Great Commandment as “The Jesus Creed” in his book by the same name (Paraclete Press, ’04).

It’s instructive to observe other New Testament occasions when both Jesus and Paul strengthen this new emphasis – actually shifting the focus from God to neighbor – by citing only the horizontal part as a complete command.

Jesus said, “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Mt. 7:12). His other two concluding statements are nearly identical to this one (Mt. 22:40; Mk. 12:31).

Paul reiterated this emphasis three times in three verses in Romans 13:8-10: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the Law. The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” And Paul repeated it once more in Galatians 5:14: “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Meaning
What are we to make of this? Is Paul contradicting Jesus? Is Jesus contradicting Himself? Are they diminishing the Law and supplanting God in favor of a purely human focus? Certainly not! Here’s the lesson: Love to my neighbor is only effective when it is visibly demonstrated. My neighbor does not know he is loved unless I show it by some practical expression of compassion, affection, empathy, sympathy or good will toward him. Of course, God knows whether I love Him because He knows my heart, but at that point my “religious” devotion does nothing for my neighbor. God wants to see my love toward Him expressed in visible, practical ways. That’s why James wrote, “Faith without deeds is dead” (Jas. 2:26).

Not only that. God Himself loves my neighbor, though my neighbor is yet unaware of and unaffected by His love. God wants me (and you) to be a conduit for His love to my/our neighbor. If I am faithful and diligent in loving my neighbor as I love myself (that’s the quality and the priority of my love), he may become conscious of God’s love and be drawn to Him because God’s care for him has become real.

But there’s a problem: In and of myself it is impossible for me to love someone else as I love myself. It is impossible for me to love anyone but me. As mere sinful humans, selflove is our default setting, our standard way of operating. But God wants to produce in us a radical turnaround from egocentered to othercentered. God has invested His ultimate, absolute, consummate outreaching love in us, so that as we drink it in and allow it to saturate our being, it enables and motivates us to do the humanly impossible – to love an object outside ourselves.

This takes place in two stages. First, as I receive God’s love and respond to Him with my whole spiritsoulmindstrength being, His love draws me out of myself to love God, the most worthy object of all, and love’s source. Then, being thus turned outward and away from myself, I am ready to invest that response in love for other humans as well. This was Jesus’ way during His earthly career. While surrounded by people who were perishing for lack of love, He lived continually in the intimate enjoyment of His Father’s love, which then flowed freely through Him to those He touched.

Again, this comes not from focusing on my neighbor as the object, but always on God as the source. If my focus is on people, I will weary and falter in loving them; my love will wear thin and dry up. God is love’s essence and its unfailing, droughtproof spring. And as I am open to His love, I become a conduit for His love flowing to others. “We love because He first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19).

Application
To really love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength is a response that rises from living immersed in the constant, conscious enjoyment of His love and fellowship, and as that love saturates us we are inspired to think and act outside ourselves. Since “God so loves the world” (Jn. 3:16), His love will not allow itself to become bottled up in us. If it’s flowing into us, it will issue from us in our interactions with people. Jesus said, “The water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:14).

Ultimately, then, our visible, palpable love for people becomes the evidence and proof of our otherwise invisible love for God: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 Jn. 4:20-21).

So, we demonstrate our love of God by loving people, and thus fulfill the greatest commandment. This is the principle that motivates missionaries. They go to the remote corners of the earth to reach people who don’t know that God loves them. They live among them so that God can shine out of their lives and draw people to Himself. It’s the principle of the incarnation: God came in human form so He could love humans up close. Jesus is back in heaven, but God is “incarnate” in us now as we interact with our neighbors.

By Bill Van Ryn