One of the better known statements of Jesus, was when He was asked which of the commandments was the greatest. This occurs in all three of the Synoptic Gospels; Matthew, Mark and Luke, with all three writers recording the same basic response, but Luke adds something interesting which is left out of the other accounts.
Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” 29 Jesus answered him, “The first commandment is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” – Mark 12:28-31
The first thing that Jesus says, in His response, is something very near and dear to the Jews, what they call “The Schema” or “Schema Israel.” It is their most loved prayer, coming from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 4. It is an affirmation of their belief in God, saying in Hebrew, “Schema Yisrael, Adonia Eloheinu, Adonai Ehud,” which translates to “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is Our God, the Lord is One.” We tend to skip over this in the church today, because it doesn’t mean all that much to us; but to the Jews who heard Jesus speak it out, it was precious and endearing. He went on to quote the following verse in Deuteronomy, saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5).
Just What Kind of Love is This?
Since Jesus’ answer was all about love, it only makes sense to ask ourselves just what He meant by the word “love.” We only have one word for love in the English language, and so it gets poorly misused all the time. But the Greek language that the New Testament was written in, has five words, each referring to an entirely different type of love.
What this means is that we have a very poor understanding of love in our modern society. All too often, true love is suborned to other things, where people manipulate the meaning of the word “love” to get what they want. They say that unless you agree with them and allow them to have their way, you don’t love them, but in fact hate them instead.
Yet the world here in Greek is very specific; it is the word “agape.” Apparently, even though they had this word in their language, they didn’t really have an understanding of it. Oh, they had a definition, as an “unconditional, giving love,” but that’s not the same as understanding it experientially. It took the coming of Jesus Christ to demonstrate to them just what agape truly meant. Before that, it was nothing more than a translation of the Hebrew word “haceed;” a word that comes from covenant.
It is just about as hard to find a real definition of haceed, as it is for agape. As I studied this out, I felt that God gave me such a definition. Please note that this is my definition, as given to me by the Holy Spirit. Nobody has yet come up with an argument against it; but you will not find it in a dictionary anywhere.
Haceed or agape is an overwhelming desire, to give of yourself, to the other person, for their benefit, no matter what it costs you.
This is the love that God has towards us and that Jesus demonstrated in going to the cross for our sins.
Loving God
From a purely intellectual viewpoint, this is an interesting choice for the most important commandment, mostly because it is not one of the Ten Commandments. One could easily expect Jesus to pick the First Commandment, where God told the people of Israel not to have any other gods or idols. That would make sense, if Jesus was focused on the letter of the Law. But He didn’t.
Picking the verse that He did sends a couple of very clear statements to Jesus’ followers. To start with, it focuses on our relationship with God, rather than obedience to the law. As such, we can see it as focusing on the spirit of the Law, rather than the letter of the Law.
Such a viewpoint can be seen as going directly against the Scribes and Pharisees, who were focused on obedience to the letter of the law. They were so focused on it, that the Pharisees erected “fences” around the Law, to ensure that they themselves, and their followers, didn’t accidentally break the Law. Jesus rebuked them elsewhere for this, calling those fences “rules of men.”
Looking at that commandment from a relational viewpoint, it shows what God truly wants from us; our love. God is love, as it says in John’s first epistle, and that has to be the basis of our relationship with Him. If we serve Him in any way, shape or form, without love, then we are merely practicing some religious act. By declaring that we are to love God, rather than just serve Him, Jesus has taken our relationship out of mere man-made religion and brought it to a new level entirely; one of being part of God’s family.
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. – 1 John 3:1-2
We have been created to be God’s children, before anything else. that is not to say that all people are His children; for all are not. They are not, because of their own choices. While they have been created to be children of God, just as we have, they have instead chosen to go their own way. It is not possible to be God’s child and go one’s own way at the same time.
Making such a choice is to say that we know better than God what we are created for and what to do with our lives. While even Christians are capable of making that mistake; most of us grow out of it, as we grow in Him. The people who have chosen to go their own way aren’t even giving themselves a chance with God.
If there is one purpose that God would choose for our lives, it is to love Him. That’s what Jesus was telling those Scribes, over 2,000 years ago. That message resounds down through the ages, as it asks the question, who will choose to love Him?
Loving Others as Ourselves
Jesus gave the Scribe more than he asked for, in adding a second commandment to the first. Interestingly enough, this commandment doesn’t actually exist anywhere in the Old Testament Law. This doesn’t make it any less valid, as it came out of the mouth of Jesus. According to the opening chapter of the Gospel of John, everything came from Him.
In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. – John 1:1-3
If we are the children of God, then the single most important thing for us to do, in His sight, is to become as like Him as we possibly can. Obviously we can’t become God; but we can develop His character within us. That’s what the Fruit of the Spirit is, a description of the character of Jesus, and through Him, of God the Father.
Btu the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. – Galatians 5:22-23
There has been a lot of talk in the Body of Christ, about loving self, as a prerequisite of loving others. Those talking about this commandment from that viewpoint are saying that we are directed by Jesus to love others, as we love ourselves. That’s fine and dandy, but Jesus was not talking about loving ourselves; He was talking about loving others. You and I can do that, through our words and actions, no matter how we feel about ourselves.
Loving others is about how we treat them. We treat ourselves well, in that we care for ourselves, feeding ourselves, giving our bodies sleep and even bathing. We care for others by making sure that they are taken care of too. That doesn’t just mean physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. if we are focused on doing that, we will not do the things that constitute sin against them.
All the Law Summed Up
A full study of the Old Testament Law requires looking at all 613 separate commandments written in the first five books of the Bible. Few New Testament believers even read those, let alone studying them thoroughly. But we can divide the “sins” shown in those commandments into two distinct categories: sins against God and sins against others. These two groups are actually treated differently in the Law, although you have to really study it to find the difference.
Basically, offerings for sins against God are referred to as “sin offerings,” while offerings for sins against others are referred to as “guilt offerings.” While that may not seem like a huge difference, it shows us that God sees those two categories differently. That is significant, causing Jesus to deal with them both, in giving two separate commandments, when asked for the “greatest” one.
Not everything in the Law deals with sin; there are lots of commandments which are directives, talking about how to make certain offerings, the festivals that were to be celebrated, what foods could and couldn’t be eaten and a host of other things. But, when it comes to the things which are considered sin, they are all sins against either God or others (our neighbors). So, when Jesus said, “all the law is summed up in these two commandments” (paraphrase of Matthew 22:40), He was right. There is nothing in the law which falls outside of these two commandments.
It is impossible to steal from someone, lie about them, or even kill them, while you are loving them; at least if you are truly loving them, giving them the haceed love that I talked about earlier. Likewise, it is impossible to sin against God, while demonstrating haceed love towards Him. Not only that, the very same love is going to motivate us to do the things that He says we are to do. So, as long as we are acting in haceed love, we are fulfilling all that God desires us to fulfill.
Created In His Image
Our acting in love, both towards God and towards others, ultimately means that we are acting as God Himself would act in the same situation. We have been created in His image (Genesis 1:27) and that has nothing to do with our physical appearance. God is a spirit (John 4:24), He has no physical form. So, when it says that we are created in His image, that’s referring to our spirits and souls being created to be like His. With that being the case, the central part of His character is love, as we discussed earlier.
What this means, is that when Jesus said to love God and love others, He was essentially telling us to live up to the character of God that has been placed within us. We are like Him and therefore need to act like Him. That’s what His “greatest commandments” were all about.
This was radically different from the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who were focused on obeying the letter of the Law. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees over this at another time, telling them that they were so focused on obeying the law, that they were tithing off of the herbs grown in their gardens, while ignoring justice, mercy and faith, things He referred to as “the weightier matters of the law” (Matthew 23:23).
In this statement alone, Jesus broke away from the religious understanding of the day, bringing new understanding of what our relationship with Father God is supposed to be. He took the yet unborn Christian religion and set it apart from any other religion in the world, by taking it from a set of rules to be followed, in order to please God, and changing it into a transformative work of the heart. True Christianity is not just about satisfying a list of rules and performing a set of rituals, it is to be something lived out in the way that we act towards God and towards others. In both cases, Jesus says we are to use that same sort of agape/haceed love, that He demonstrated to us by going to the cross. But don’t worry, we don’t have to be hung on the cross, we just need to go to the foot of it and bring others there too.