The Great Commandment

                         Matthew 22:36-40

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self.”

 

When the lawyers tried to trap the Lord Jesus Christ by the question, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus answered by quoting two Old Testament passages (Deuteronomy 6:4-6 and Leviticus 19:18).  These passages were familiar to the Jews, as every adult male was obligated to recite each morning and evening what they called “The Shema” (the confession of faith of later Judaism), or what Jesus called the Great Commandment.  However, in the “second” they had tried to limit to Jews only, even though the context reveals in Lev. 19:34, that God told them to love the foreigners as themselves, for they too had been foreigners in the land of Egypt.  God is the kind of God who loves foreigners and He expects His people to love them too.  (See Jesus teaching in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:30-37).  We should never fall into Satan’s trap by loving only people like us.  People of other languages, cultures and races are loved by Him and should be loved by us in the same way He loves them.

 

In loving the “Lord thy God” with all the heart, soul, and mind we reveal the uniqueness of who God is.  For as the “Lord” He is the covenant keeper with great power and deliverance.  He has demonstrated His great love and care in many powerful ways and He deserves the love of His followers.  As “thy God” (Hebrew, ‘Elohim from a root word meaning majesty and power).  He is all-powerful and His followers can afford to trust themselves to Him in faith and love in all matters of life.

 

The heart is used as the seat of emotions in general and of love in particular.  The soul is the center of personality, who one is in the inner person.  Loving with the soul implies that love must come from the very core of an individual’s inner being.  Loving with the mind implies being in full agreement with the revealed will and Word of God and loving the way God loves.

 

Jesus added to this Great Commandment a second dimension of love that He expects from us.  He told us to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, which recognizes that most people will love themselves first and above all.  Since Jesus had already explained in the  “parable of the Great Samaritan” that our neighbor was not one who lived near us, but any person we come in contact with who needs our help and love.  So, often times, our neighbor is one the Lord has placed in our path so we can be His loving hands touching them in their time of need.