The Greatest Commandment

Introduction

Illustration - Which is the greatest armed service? All are reliant on at least one other; no one service can stand alone. The Army needs air support of the Air Force like in the Battle of the Bulge and the heavy lift capacity of the Navy to move their heavy divisions as in the case of Desert Shield, where VII Corps had to be moved from Europe to the Saudi Arabia. The Air Force needed the security of the Army to protect their airfields from ground assault such as the Pusan perimeter in Korea. The Marines need the Navy for amphibious support and initial air support from the carriers until they could establish bases like on Guadalcanal. The Navy needs the Marine Corps to secure their ports like in Gitmo or protect the ships from enemy boarding parties. The Coast Guard secures our coasts so the Navy is freed up to take on the open ocean. All of the services are intertwined and rely on each other, in essence making the whole DOD greater than the sum of its parts.

Just the same, All of God’s commandments are pure and holy of themselves and can be called the greatest of the commandments. You can have endless debates about which one is greater, Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, or which one is lesser, thou shalt not bear false witness, worship idols, thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy.

Lucky for us the question has already been answered by Jesus in -

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 22

When the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. 35 And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test Him: 36 “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?”

37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. t 38 This is the greatest and most important command. 39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. w 40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

The ‘first’ greatest commandment is a restatement of verses out of the Old Testament, . This is called the Shema and is the core of Jewish beliefs. Looking further into Deut, you see the following:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

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. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This is one of the more orthodox Jewish rituals called the phylacteries, where the verses are written on small pieces of paper and put into a small box that is wrapped around the head and recited. Also, many Jewish homes have a small box or pocket nailed inside the front door of the home.

The ‘second’ commandment is also from the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus, 19:18:

English Standard Version Chapter 19

18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

What you have here is a composite of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments were split into two ‘tables’ , where #1-4 were God-related, and #5-10 were human-related. The God-related commandments didn’t necessarily have precedence over the human-related, but as Jesus related here, loving God was the supreme priority and only by loving God could we love each other and thus apply the human-related second table.

In obeying the ‘first’ commandment you are loving God singularly and solely (the 1st Commendment) and in so doing are refusing to worship other gods (2nd commandment) as well as showing the proper respect for God by not speaking against God’s greatness or holiness (3rd commandment), and by obeying his ordinances (4th commandment).

The ‘second’ greatest commandment

Imago Dei

Look at Spurgeon sermons