October 28th 2024

Recap:

Good morning!

I am eager to begin exploring the next part in our series on love and Commands. Last week we focused on john 14:15 and some surrounding verses, so if you missed it then you can listen on our youtube channel to catch up. We explored the themes of Jesus beng our command giver and how our perceptition of the command giver shapes how we receive the commands.

So the first thing we went over is that

Jesus has the authority to give Commands because he is God

Jesus’s Love is the base for our new commands

Repeat the parrallel betweeen OT scene and NT moment

We saw that like the scene in Exodus 20, Jesus mirrors that moment by revealing himself to be God and then giving a command and its foundation is his love.

We also went over some definitions of love and Commandments. It is always helpful to go over what we mean when we say something. So last week we went over.

Definitions

Commandments: Entole: an order or instruction that we are to live out.

Love: Expositor's Bible Commentary - Agapaō does not denote affection or romantic attachment; it rather denotes caring love, a deliberate attitude of mind that concerns itself with the well-being of the one loved. Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is its dominant trait. We can sum up the meaning as sacrificial love.

This morning we are going to be look at Matt 22:34-40 as another example of how these two concepts of love and commands interact with each other.

Moving Forward:

A place were we can focus on what Love is in the context of a commandment.

Set the scene: Jesus in the temple 21:23, Speaking to the religous leaders. Both the Sadducees and Pharisees are trying to trip up Jesus and failing

A look at one of Jesus’ most famous Commands: Matt 22:34-40

Matthew 22:34–40 ESV

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test 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 first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus answers quoting two OT verses Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18 . Important point, A common question is what is applicable to us as Christians today espically when it comes to the OT law. One way of testing a OT commandment is if it is repeated in the NT. If Jesus repeated a commandment as a prescriptive command in the NT then it is still binding on us. So When we see Jesus take these two commands and link them together in the NT, we can be confindent that we are following faithfully.

Another fun note is that the words we looked at last week are the same ones used for love and commandments here as well. So we can walk forward with our definitions knowing that we are in the right ball park for our understanding.

This is a wonderful answer that is easy to throw on a plaque and make pictures out of. Though it begs a question. Central Question: What does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul and mind? It begs the question again of what those ideas mean. I know so many definitions, too many even. The question is highly personal. How we live out Love, that sacrifical love is highly dependant on our personalities and circumstances. We can agree on what love means, then we can work towards giving some guide lines for the rest.

I found this very helpful explaination in a dictionary about the Jewish understand of the Heart.

The New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition (Heart)

The Hebrews thought in terms of subjective experience rather than objective, scientific observation, and thereby avoided the modern error of over-departmentalization. It was essentially the whole man, with all his attributes, physical, intellectual and psychological, of which the Hebrew thought and spoke, and the heart was conceived of as the governing centre for all of these. It is the heart which makes a man, or a beast, what he is, and governs all his actions (Pr. 4:23). Character, personality, will, mind are modern terms which all reflect something of the meaning of ‘heart’ in its biblical usage

Another definition I really liked was the heart meant center. The center of our lives, the whole of our being is what is meant with our heart. So the greatest commandment that Jesus gives us is to love God with our whole being, with all of our dimesons of being.

And remember when we say love it is a sacifical and purposful love. Agapaō does not denote affection or romantic attachment; it rather denotes caring love, a deliberate attitude of mind that concerns itself with the well-being of the one loved. Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is its dominant trait. We can sum up the meaning as sacrificial love.

. Lets put this in the context of human relationships. There are a couple people in our life who we love with our whole being. Hopefully it isn’t too many, that would be exshausting and bad boundary setting. The couple that come to mind are Spouse, Kids, Parents, Best Friends and maybe a dog, hopefully not a cat. They don’t feel the same way about you. I promise

You don’t get to pick the family you were born into. Later in life you can pick who you call family but the family you grow up in is largely out of your hands. When I was working with youth, i would try to remind them that their parents loved them and one way I would do that is through the taxi service. I had many families who were busy often with activities and one or both of the parents would be the one to taxi everyone around and whose whole night was spent bringing kids to different events and waiting. For some parents, that is an aspcet of how they show love. They sacrifice their evening so that they people they care about are able to have fun. It is a silly example but a meaningful one. As I have gotten older, I have seen more and more the way my parents have sacrificed for our family. They choose to love when it was difficult and not fun, they choose even now to love us by giving intentionally themselves.

In a marriage ceremony, you exchange vows that say you will choose to love them in all circumstances, sickness and in health, poor or rich. You made a covenant together to forasake all other people and choose to focus your love on one person. In marriage, you are called to put the other person before your needs, to sacifice parts of yourself for the sake of the other. But importantly, what is given pales in comparison to what is received. You receive back the same self giving love that shapes you into someone who you never thought possible.

Bernie, Organizational story,

If you are beginning to see some parallels to our relationship with God, i am not surprised. Jesus’s relationship with the church is described as a marriage. The covenant of self giving love is modelled all through out his ministry.

That is one example of what it means to love one person with your whole being that the transformative effects it has. The the beauty of the verse, Love God with all your heart, is that it isn’t just a one way devotion. It is not like worshipping a diety who gives nothing back, who requires you to pour out yourself and maybe be seen. But God, so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, so that we would be made right before him and be transformed into his likeness. So loving God with your whole heart, your whole being isn’t just pouring out but it is a two way relationship. God’s self giving love is modelled in Jesus, remember last week when Jesus said, you are to love one another AS I HAVE LOVED YOU. The more we love God with all of our being, the more we lay down at his feet, the more we are built up by his Love for us. As we trust God with our whole being, we start to become shaped by his love. Like I have been shaped by my wifes, like you have been shaped by your families.

I do want to add that not all relationships where we love sacifical are honoured. Often, we will make mistakes and mistreat the people who give us that gift of themselves. It can cause increible wounds and hurt, So if you have experienced that, please know that God is perfect, he will never dismiss us or mistreat us. His Love is geninue and perfect.

I think we are getting the picture of what loving with all your heart is. intentionally and sacrifically giving yourself to God.

So what about the other ones. The soul and mind, we haven’t mentioned much of those yet. As i was reading about the passage, my plan was to do what we just did with Heart for soul and mind. We could have been here all afternoon. But i kept running into resources that said stuff like this.

Deuteronomy 6:5 does not describe separate compartments of the self, but emphasizes that a person must love God with his whole being, with every capacity at his command.

In Deuteronomy 6:5, the Hebrew word "nephesh" (נפשׁ) is translated as "soul" in English. This term, in the context of loving God, refers to the inner person and can be understood as the source of appetites, emotions, and intelligence[1]. It represents a deeply personal aspect of an individual's being, encompassing one's mind, reason, and will[2]. The command to love God with all one's "soul" implies a deeply felt personal decision, akin to an intense craving or desire[1]. This concept of "soul" (nephesh) in Hebrew thought is not limited to an immaterial essence but can also be synonymous with life or person, emphasizing the holistic nature of one's devotion to God[1][3]. The use of "nephesh" in this verse underscores the importance of loving God with one's entire being, including one's intellectual and mental faculties[2].

[1] Stephen J. Andrews and Robert D. Bergen, Deuteronomy, Holman Old Testament Commentary (B&H Publishing Group, 2009), 92. [2] Philip H. Towner, “Mind/Reason,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed., Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 528. [3] Andrew B. Perrin, “Hebrew Word Study without Hebrew: ‘Soul’ Searching in Deuteronomy 6:5—נפשׁ,” ed. Michael S. Heiser, Bible Study Magazine: January–February 2009 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2009), 35.

I was getting frustrated, because I wanted to go over the subjective experiences more, so I thought lets go to the greek and hope for a different answer.

In the NT, the soul (ψυχή, psyche) is portrayed in a similar way as in the OT, and is the seat of desire and will (Eph 6:6). It is also the seat of the emotions (Matt 26:38). It may represent the whole personality (Matt 22:37), and it survives death (Acts 2:27; Rev. 6:9). The soul often refers to the whole life of the person (Matt 6:25; Luke 17:33).

Joel T. Hamme, “Soul,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

Again, i was running into the same issue. it both reinforces the idea of the heart, our center, our whole self and at the same time it opens up the possiblity of our personality. I kept running into the idea that as much as i want to separate the passage into three awesome points that each hits an aspect of our being, i realised what i was doing.

I was trying to focus on the living out of the verse and what I was missing is that I was de-emphasizing the heart of the passage.

I was hoping to bring specific ways for us to live out that subjective experience. How our personality could have a top 5 ways to love God type list. But instead i kept finding that i was being frustrated by what the passage was trying to tell me.

It is similar to when want to get good at a skill and you are drawn to the flashy advanced moves. In volleyball, there is a saying when coaching , pass first then hit. If you can’t pass but only hit, you end up missing out on a whole level of understanding of the game.

Our basics need to be solidified over and over again.

So our take away today, the practical application, is to do a relationship inventory.

Am I living out a self giving relationship with God?

Am I really putting God at the heart/the Centre of my life?

Am I putting too much emphasis on the mechanics of relationship and missing the heart of it?

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There are tons of tool available to help guide you in how to live out your devotional life. This commandment is asking a more vital question “How does the center of your life reflect your love for God?”