The Greatest Commandment
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Mark 12:28-34
Mark 12:28-34
Jesus is in the temple in the week building up to Passover.
The Sanhedrin came to dispute with Him and question Him about His authority. Then they sent the Pharisees and Herodians to do the same, then along came the Sadducees, and now a scribe who has been watching the debates approaches with a question.
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”
A scribe was someone who was trained in understanding the law of Moses, they were theologians, highly knowledgable.
Mark’s account suggests that this man’s intentions were noble - he saw that Jesus had answered them well.
He literally asks Jesus, ‘which commandment is first of all’, the ESV and NIV translate this as ‘most important of all’, because this was the essence of what the scribe was asking, not which commandment was first of all in terms of order, but in terms of primacy.
All of God’s commandments are to be obeyed, but some commandments are weightier than others.
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
All sin is sin, but not all sin is equal, some sins are worse than others.
29 Jesus answered, “The most important 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 and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
Jesus quotes from a well known passage in the Old Testament, Deut 6:4-5
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
This passage was repeated morning and evening by faithful Jews - it is known as the Shema, the Hebrew word ‘Hear.’
This commandment is the greatest of all because it is a commandment which is universal in application.
And so what is ultimately required of us by God? Love.
The world: ‘It’s all about love! Love is all we need!’ ‘You Christians are hypocrits - doesn’t your Bible tell you to love everyone? Stop being so bigoted and hateful! Love is love.”
The slogan itself doesn’t really say anything - book is book, music is music. But of course the statement is really being used to defend certain expressions of love that the Bible forbids.
Though we are absolutely commanded to love our neighbour and that means according to Jesus ALL of our neighbours! We are not permitted however to stop loving God in order to make our neighbour feel more loved. For example - to celebrate something that God says is a sin is number 1) not loving God and number 2) not loving our neighbour (who we must bear witness to).
The world will say that this is hate, that in order to love someone we must love and celebrate all that they do. Well - I love myself but I don’t even celebrate all that I do!
God loves us perfectly but He does not approve of all of our choices in life - that’s why he sent Jesus.
We are not permitted to love our neighbour above our God! The commandment begins first with Yahweh - His name and a statement about who He is.
RC Sproul story - Rebekah & John
We are to love God because of who He is - not just for His attributes or what He can do for us.
And we are not commanded to love any God of our choosing - we are to love The God - Yahweh - the God of the Bible.
WITH ALL OF YOUR HEART
Kardia - Gr, Leb - Heb. The heart is representative of the inner man, the seat of our understanding, our will, our emotions. Often we think of the heart just as the organ that keeps us alive, or of the emotions, but in Hebrew thought the heart was much more than that.
Some that love God outwardly with religious observance but do not love Him inwardly with the heart
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
The Greek uses the preposition ex (out of) for each of the four commands, we are to love Him ‘out of’ all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind and all of our strength.
WITH ALL OF YOUR SOUL
Psyche - Gr/Nephesh - Hebrew. The Hebrew word Nephesh means life. So your whole life is to lean into loving God. Interestingly - Nephesh can also mean throat or neck - It doesn’t mean that here but maybe it does have some relevance. We speak about what we love. It’s not an effort, it’s what we love. What do you speak about? What is your life all about? If your friends were asked to give an appraisal of your life - would they mention God first?
WITH ALL OF YOUR MIND
Dianoia - Gr. Mind isn’t included in the Shema, so why did Jesus add it? The Hebrew understanding of the heart actually included the mind ‘thinking, reasoning, contemplating.’ But by Jesus’s time a new school of thought had arisen that connected the mind exclusively with the brain (encephalocentrism), and so the mind was mentioned as well as the heart.
I don’t need theology, I just love Jesus…
Wanting to know all about Becca when we first met - loooong walks and late talks.
Studying the scriptures, loving Biblical truth is loving God.
What are we to think about Christians who never open their Bibles?
WITH ALL OF YOUR STRENGTH
Loving God with all that you’ve got - all of your resource. Not giving up when the going gets tough. Not submitting to your feelings - I don’t feel like going to church, I’m too tired, there’s something more interesting happening today...’ Put your body and mind under the yoke - train yourself to love Him with strength.
Me and Tim weight training. Didn’t see results for ages - have to keep going. Have to push ourselves to the limit, to failure. Same is true of devotion to God. Do we have strength for other hobbies and pastimes that we don’t have for God?
2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
Maybe we’ve let our devotion to God slip from where it once was like the Ephesian Church - they had good works, they had good theology, they hated false teaching, but they had let their love for God grow cold. We must repent of our lukewarmness and recover that first fire again!
New Testament II: Mark (Revised) Loving What Is Worthy of Love
This virtue consists in nothing else but in loving what is worthy of love; it is prudence to choose this
Augustine
The truth is - none of us have kept this commandment for even one day of our lives. We’ve all broken it.
This commandment is more searching than all of the 10 commandments. Well I’ve never killed, I’ve never stolen, yes but have you fully loved God with everything you have for every moment of your life? No.
Christopher Hitchens the famous british atheist used to ask ‘tell me just one moral act that a Christian can do that an atheist can’t..’ it used to stump people. But the atheist can’t do the most important moral command of all - love God.
And because he can’t or won’t love God, he won’t love his neighbour rightly either.
The two flow together - if we are careful to love God first, then we will naturally love our neighbour too, care for them, look out for them, provide for them.
31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
Love is what God is ultimately looking for.
All of the rules and ‘do nots’ of the Bible are to be understood in the light of love, of holiness to God because we love Him. When we seperate the commandments from love then we’re abusing them!
6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
This scribe was near the Kingdom but not in it.
There are degrees of closeness to the Kingdom, some are closer than others.
This man had wisdom, knowledge of the scriptures but just like the rich young ruler he lacked the one - Christ.
One draws near to the kingdom of God not by proper theology but by drawing near to Jesus. - James Edwards