32  The Great  Commandment  (22:34-40)

But when the Pharisees heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered themselves together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 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.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” (22:34-40)

Someone has said that love may not make the world go around but it makes the trip worthwhile.

Those words perhaps gather up the sentiment of the world that the sweetest and most exhilarating of all emotions and experiences is love. In whatever age or with whatever group of people, it has been the almost universal belief that love is the greatest thing in life, the summum bonum, the virtue par excellence. Consequently, volumes upon volumes of poems, songs, plays, novels, and films have been produced about love.

God’s Word concurs that love is the greatest virtue, but the love which it elevates as supreme is of a much deeper and more substantive kind than that which the world understands and admires. In response to the third in a series of three questions posed by His adversaries for the purpose of discrediting and entrapping Him (see also 22:15-17, 23-28), Jesus declared that agap love is the supreme divine requirement of men, both in regard to Himself and in regard to other men.

THE APPROACH OF THE PHARISEES

But when the Pharisees heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered themselves together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, (22:34-35)

The first test of Jesus by the Pharisees, made through their disciples and the Herodians, was political, dealing with the payment of the despised poll-tax (v. 17). The second test, by the Sadducees, was theological, pertaining to the reality of the resurrection, which they denied (vv. 23, 28). Now the Pharisees were about to test Him again in the area of theology.

When Jesus answered the absurd question about the seven brothers by showing that even Moses taught the resurrection, He had put the Sadducees to silence. The verb phimo (put . . . to silence) literally means to muzzle, to forcefully restrict the opening of the mouth. The term is used of the muzzling of an ox (1 Cor. 9:9) and of Jesus’ silencing a demon (Mark 1:25) and a storm (Mark 4:39). The Sadducees were verbally incapacitated by the Lord, rendered utterly speechless, just like the man who was rebuked by the king for coming to the wedding feast without proper clothes (Matt. 22:12).

When the Pharisees heard about Jesus putting the Sadducees to silence, they decided to have another try themselves at entrapping Him, this time directly by one of their own number rather than through their less capable disciples. The Pharisees doubtlessly had mixed feelings when they heard the news. They must have been pleased that the Sadducees had been proved wrong about Moses not teaching resurrection. But that feeling was far outweighed by a sense of dismay and frustration at still another failure to discredit their common enemy, Jesus.

Consequently, the Pharisees again (see v. 15) gathered themselves together clandestinely somewhere in the Temple to plan their next strategy. In doing so, they unintentionally and unknowingly fulfilled prophecy by plotting together “against the Lord, and against His Christ” (Acts 4:26-28). Out of that conclave came the third and final question to test Jesus.

The particular one of them that they chose to confront Jesus was a lawyer. The man was a scribe (Mark 12:28) but was called a lawyer by Matthew to indicate his unusual expertise in the Mosaic law and perhaps also his renown in adjudicating religious and social disputes. He was probably the most learned and astute expert on scriptural and rabbinical law in their ranks, and if anyone would be a match for Jesus, they thought, this man would be.

This lawyer, however, also seems to have been a cut above his fellow religious leaders in honesty and humility. Like that of a few of the other scribes, his acknowledgment that Jesus had answered the Sadducees wisely seems to have been genuine (Mark 12:28; cf. Luke 20:39). Obviously the man was not totally straightforward, because he allowed himself to be used in testing Jesus in order to discredit Him. But apparently his duplicity was mixed with a measure of sincere concern for what Jesus would say in response to the test question.

THE QUESTION BY THE LAWYER

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (22:36)

In his addressing Jesus as Teacher, the lawyer was probably not being scornful, as the previous questioners had been (see vv. 16, 24). As already noted, he seems to have had respect for Jesus and may have felt somewhat guilty at being used to ensnare Him.

In asking, “Which is the great commandment in the Law?” the lawyer was asking what was the greatest commandment of Moses. Although the scribes and Pharisees considered the whole Old Testament to be authoritative, and not just the five books of Moses as did the Sadducees, they nevertheless considered Moses to be the supreme human figure in Scripture. Moses had spoken with God face to face, was the humblest man on earth, and had taken the engraved tablets of the law directly from the hand of God, as it were. He was also the great deliverer whom God called to lead Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land. He was therefore without peer among those the Lord chose to be human instruments of His divine revelation and activity.

The scribes and Pharisees were said to sit in Moses’ seat (Matt. 23:2) because that represented the ultimate authority in Judaism. One rabbi said that by referring to Moses as “faithful in all My household” (Num. 12:7), the Lord ranked Moses above the angels. From the beginning of His ministry, Jesus assured His hearers that, far from seeking “to abolish the Law or the Prophets,” He had come to fulfill them, and that “until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:17-18). He made clear that, although He was the Messiah and God’s own Son, He was not preaching and teaching anything that obviated the law of Moses or any other part of Scripture.

But because Jesus’ teaching of Scripture was so utterly contrary to theirs, which for centuries had been encrusted by thousands of humanly-devised rabbinical interpretations, the Pharisees were convinced that He must be teaching a message He considered to be greater than that of Moses. And it was evidence to that effect that they now hoped Jesus would disclose, because to contradict Moses was to contradict God and be guilty of heresy. Their purpose was to expose Him as an apostate and thereby turn the people against Him.

Over the years, the rabbis had supposedly determined that, just as there were 613 separate letters in the Hebrew text of the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, in the book of Numbers, there were also 613 separate laws in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. Such letterism, as it is sometimes called, was extremely popular and was considered to be a valuable exegetical tool for interpreting Scripture. The rabbis had divided those 613 laws into affirmative and negative groups, holding that there were 248 affirmative laws, one for every part of the human body, as they supposed, and 365 negative laws, one for each day of the year. The laws were also divided into heavy and light, the heavy ones being absolutely binding and the light ones less binding.

There had never been unanimity, however, as to which laws were heavy and which were light, and the rabbis and scribes spent countless hours proudly debating the merits of their particular divisions and the ranking of laws within the divisions.

It was doubtlessly that superficial and fanciful orientation to the law that led them to think Jesus had his own scheme. Because He considered Himself to be the Messiah, they assumed that surely Jesus had devised a system to display His erudition in the law just as they were accustomed to doing. And judging by the lawyer’s single and extremely simple question, they assumed that His naming the one great commandment in the Law would be sufficiently unorthodox to condemn Him.

THE RESPONSE OF THE LORD

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.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” (22:37-40)

Jesus responded without hesitation, and the answer He gave was in total accord not only with Mosaic law but with an ancient Jewish custom based on that law. The command, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, was part of the Shema (Hebrew for “Hear”), so named because it began with, “Hear, O Israel!” The Shema comprised the texts of Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 11:13-21; and Numbers 15:37-41—by far the most familiar, most quoted, and most copied Scripture passages in Judaism. In Jesus’ day, every faithful Jew recited the Shema twice a day.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 were two of the four Scripture texts (with Ex. 13:1-10 and 13:11-16) that were copied on small pieces of parchment and placed in phylacteries that were worn on the foreheads and left arms of Jewish men during prayer. The practice was based on the admonition of Deuteronomy 6:8, “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead” (cf. 11:18). It was for the ostentatious display of phylacteries that Jesus rebuked the scribes and Pharisees only a short while later, while He was still teaching in the Temple (Matt. 23:5). In a similar way, copies of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 were placed in mezuzahs, small boxes that Jews attached to their doorposts, following the instruction of Deuteronomy 6:9 and 11:20. Both phylacteries and mezuzahs are still used by many orthodox Jews today.

“I am declaring to you,” Jesus was therefore saying, “that the great commandment is the commandment of Moses that all of you recite every day and that many of you bind on your arms and foreheads every day.”

Aheb, the Hebrew word for love used in Deuteronomy 6:5, refers primarily to an act of mind and will, the determined care for the welfare of something or someone. It might well include strong emotion, but its distinguishing characteristics were the dedication and commitment of choice. It is the love that recognizes and chooses to follow that which is righteous, noble, and true, regardless of what one’s feelings in a matter might be. It is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek agapa in the New Testament, the verb of intelligent, purposeful, and committed love that is an act of the will. This love is in contrast to the emotion and tender affection of phile and the physical, sensual love of eros (which is not used in the New Testament).

To love the Lord with all one’s heart, . . . soul, and . . . mind (Mark’s account adds “strength,” 12:30) does not express separate and technical definitions of each element of human nature or a compartmentalizing of love into three or four categories, but rather connotes comprehensiveness. We are to love the Lord our God with every part of our being.

On the other hand, the areas are listed distinctly, each one preceded by its own with all your. It is therefore helpful to look at some distinctions in each of them in order to understand the fullness of what love for God should include.

To the ancient Hebrews, heart referred to the core of one’s personal being. The book of Proverbs counsels, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (4:23). The term soul is closest to what we would call emotion and is the word Jesus used when He cried out in the Garden of Gethsemane the night He was arrested: “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death” (Matt. 26:38). Mind corresponds to what is usually translated “might” in Deuteronomy 6:5. The Hebrew term had a broad connotation and carried the general idea of moving ahead with energy and strength. Mind is used here in the sense of intellectual, willful vigor and determination, carrying both the meaning of mental endeavor and of strength.

Genuine love of the Lord is intelligent, feeling, willing, and serving. It involves thought, sensitivity, intent, and even action where that is possible and appropriate. God has never sought either empty words or empty ritual. His desire is for the person himself, not simply what the person possesses. If He truly has the person, He inevitably has all that the person possesses as well. And just as God loves us with His whole being, we are to return His love with our whole being. His love for mankind was so great “that He gave His only begotten Son” for their redemption (John 3:16). Godly love, whether as His love for man or man’s love for Him, is measured by what it gives, not by what it might gain. It does not love because love is beneficial but because love is right and good.

God requires more than bare belief. James reminds us that even the demons believe that God exists; but instead of rejoicing in that belief, they shudder (James 2:19). The distinguishing mark of saving belief in God is love of God. Faith in Jesus Christ that is not characterized by a consuming love for Him is not saving faith but simply an acknowledgement of His divinity such as even the demons make.

I believe that the transforming new creation that takes place at salvation produces a new will, desire, and attitude deep within the person that can best be described as love for God. John makes love for God the true mark of the believer (see John 14:23-24; 1 John 2:5; 3:17; 4:12-13, 16-21). Peter declares that God is precious to those who believe (1 Pet. 2:7), pointing to the same truth that love for God and Christ characterize a true Christian.

The Ten Commandments themselves make clear that love for and obedience to God are inseparable. The Lord shows His “lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love [Him] and keep [His] commandments” (Ex. 20:6; cf. Deut. 7:9; Neh. 1:5). Jesus declared, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15), and John wrote, “And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him” (1 John 2:3-5). A person who belongs to God loves God and therefore obeys God. One of the most beautiful descriptions of a Christian is one who loves “our Lord Jesus Christ with a love incorruptible” (Eph. 6:24). And one of the most sobering descriptions of an unbeliever is “anyone [who] does not love the Lord” (1 Cor. 16:22).

True love of God declares with Paul, “For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). In essence he was saying that, even though he did not always do what was right, he always loved what was right and longed to do what was honoring to God. That was the opposite attitude of the scribes and Pharisees, whom Jesus repeatedly condemned for making great pretense of love for God on the outside while having no inward love for Him at all. They were interested only in the outward religious ceremonies and actions that fed their self-righteousness, self-satisfaction, and hypocrisy. Although they recited the Shema with meticulous regularity, that verbal declaration of love for God was hollow and meaningless.

Just as belonging to God is loving God, not belonging to Him is hating Him (Ex. 20:5). God’s people are those who love Him, and the unsaved are those who hate Him and are His adversaries (Deut. 32:41; Prov. 8:36).

The person who truly loves the Lord with all his heart and soul and mind is the person who trusts Him and obeys Him. That person demonstrates his love by meditating on God’s glory (Ps. 18:1-3), trusting in God’s divine power (Ps. 31:23), seeking fellowship with God (Ps. 63:1-8), loving God’s law (Ps. 119:165), being sensitive to how God feels (Ps. 69:9), loving what God loves (Ps. 119:72, 97, 103), loving whom God loves (1 John 5:1), hating what God hates (Ps. 97:10), grieving over sin (Matt. 26:75), rejecting the world (1 John 2:15), longing to be with Christ (2 Tim. 4:8), and obeying God wholeheartedly (John 14:21).

Above all, the one who truly loves God is the one who truly obeys God. Like Paul, he knows his love is imperfect and his obedience is imperfect, but he presses “on in order that [he] may lay hold of that for which also [he] was laid hold of by Christ Jesus,” pressing “on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:12, 14).

To say that Jesus died for man’s sin is to say that He died for man’s hatred of God, which is the essence of all sin. Christ died for man’s lack of love for God. And just as He offers forgiveness for past lack of love for God, Christ also provides for future love for God. The great Forgiver is also the great Enabler, because through Christ, “the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5).

Even before Christ came to earth, God’s way was the way of love, which was the way of obedience. The Jews of Jesus’ day should have been convicted of their lovelessness and their disobedience, because the Old Testament was clear—and nowhere more clear than in the Shema—that the person without obedience for God was without love for God and was therefore without God Himself.

After stating the first and greatest commandment, Jesus did the Pharisees one better and added the second as well: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Not surprisingly, the second greatest commandment involves the same virtue as the first, namely, love. The command for genuine love of God, Jesus declared, is next followed in importance by the command for a love of your neighbor that is of the same order as the love you already have for yourself.

Just as the Pharisees had no genuine love for God, neither did they have genuine love even for their Jewish neighbor, not to mention their Gentile neighbor. Instead, as Jesus reminded the multitudes a short while later, the scribes and Pharisees “tie up heavy loads, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger” (Matt. 23:4). Like the mercenary Sadducees who extorted the Temple worshipers in the selling of sacrifices and exchanging of money, the scribes and Pharisees also abused and made religious merchandise of their fellow Jews.

Genuine love for one’s neighbor is of the same kind as genuine love for God. It is by choice purposeful, intentional, and active, not merely sentimental and emotional. And it is measured, Jesus said, by your love for yourself. When a person is hungry, he feeds himself; when he is thirsty, he gets himself a drink; and when he is sick, he takes medicine or sees a doctor—all because he is so consumed with caring for himself. He does not simply think or talk about food or water or medicine but does whatever is necessary to provide those things for himself. A person never simply says to himself, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” without doing anything to secure his needed clothing and food (see James 2:16).

Contrary to some contemporary interpretations of this passage, Jesus was not commanding that a person love himself but assumed he already does love himself. “No one ever hated his own flesh,” Paul states, “but nourishes and cherishes it” (Eph. 5:29). And just as a person looks out for his own welfare, both by the legitimacy of natural design as well as because of sinful selfishness, he will also look out for the welfare of others if he truly loves them.

The basic requirements both of Judaism and of Christianity are summed up in the same dual command: to love God and to love one’s fellow man. “On these two commandments” Jesus said, “depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” Everything else in the Old Testament that God required of believers hung on those two commands. Likewise, every New Testament requirement of believers is based on them. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God,” John declares; “and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). “He who loves his neighbor,” Paul says, “has fulfilled the law. For this, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom. 13:8-10).

If people loved perfectly there would be no need for law, because the person who loves others will never do them harm. In the same way, the believer who loves God with all his being will never take His name in vain, will never worship idols, and will never fail to obey, worship, honor, and glorify Him as Lord.

The lawyer was favorably, and no doubt surprisingly, impressed by Jesus’ answer. “Right, Teacher,” he said; “‘You have truly stated that . . . to love Him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as himself, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ And when Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God’” (Mark 12:32-34).