Mark 12:28-34
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
This passage calls us to the core design God has for us. It begins with our relationship with God and results in our relationship with other people.
Some people, even ourselves at times, get caught up in legalism with doing instead of being. The doing should flow out of the being. The 10 Commandments can be neatly divided into two parts: #1-4 = loving God, #5-10 loving others.
The type of love we ought to have should model God’s love for us. First Corinthians 13 is a great chapter to review about the meaning of love. Love should be unconditional and is an act of the will.
1. Loving God
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
This is a quote from the Great Shema of Deut 6:4-5: 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
All of life is included in this command. If we put God first, all other things can be put in their proper place and priority.
There are various ways we lack love for God or even the opposite, “hate” God:
1) Reject
2) Disobey
3) Blaspheme
4) Neglect or indifference
Spurgeon: “They would not be bold enough and honest enough to come straight out, and despise God, and join the ranks of his open enemies, but they forget God; he is not in all their thoughts. They rise in the morning without a prayer, they rest at night without bending the knee, they go through the week’s business and they never acknowledge a God. Sometimes they talk about good luck and chance, strange deities of their own brain; but God, the over-ruling God of Providence, they never talk of, though sometimes they may mention his name in flippancy, and so increase their transgressions against him.” (The First and Great Commandment, Sermon 162).
5) People study about God and know about God and God’s creation but have no love for God.
6) Bing caught up in religion, as Isaiah 29:13 states, “The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.’”
The passage shows Four ways to love God:
a. Heart: This might be described as our affection, our inner most being and what is important to us. We need to love God with all our energy and desire. God ought to be the object of our pursuit.
b. Soul: The Greek word here also means life. Do we love God enough to die for God? Perhaps we don’t love God enough unless we come to this point.
c. Mind: This is our intellect, our thought processes and ability to reason. Some people believe in God but don’t act on that belief. If we don’t act on our belief, do we really believe?
d. Strength. This involves our actions, how we live out our love through what our bodies do. It is not simply avoiding certain things but embracing what is pleasing to God.
Idolatry is anything that rivals God for our love and attention.
John Wesley said, “These idols, these rivals of God, are innumerable; but they may be nearly reduced to three parts. First. Objects of sense; such as gratify one or more of our outward senses. These excite the first kind of “love of the world,” which St. John terms, “the desire of the flesh.” Secondly. Objects of the imagination; things that gratify our fancy, by their grandeur, beauty, or novelty. All these make us fair promises of happiness, and thereby prevent our seeking it in God. This the Apostle terms, “the desire of the eyes;” whereby, chiefly, the imagination is gratified. They are, Thirdly, what St. John calls, “the pride of life.” He seems to mean honour, wealth, and whatever directly tends to engender pride.” (The Unity of the Divine Being, Sermon 114).
2. Loving Others
This command comes from Leviticus 19:18: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”
1 John 4:11-12 states: “Dear friends, since God has loved us, we ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
God has created us to love. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.”
No one is able to love perfectly. We cannot keep these commands on our own. That is why we need a savior. We are enabled to love because of Christ. He has become our righteousness (Rom 4:25).
“A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
Into thine arms I fall;
Jesus, be thou my righteousness,
My Saviour and my all!”
Love begins with gratitude: being thankful and recognizing God’s love for us. Thankfulness to God leads to compassion towards others.
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