Recapitulation
Jesus has been teaching and healing in the Temple for
several days. His activities riled the
Jewish leadership who sent various champion debate teams in to challenge His
authority before the people. But Jesus
turns every attempt into proof that they not only rejected Jesus’ legitimate authority
but God’s as well since they also rejected John the Baptist’s—a man held to be
a prophet of God by all the people. The
last several rounds of questions revealed that many also denied God’s power.
A Good Question
Now, a new player came upon the scene—a lawyer, that is, an
expert in Jewish religious law (who was also a Pharisee)—with a really good
question. Matthew tells us that he asked
Jesus a question regarding the Law while the other Pharisees were huddled
together in the aftermath of Jesus handily answering Team Sadducee. This lawyer apparently greatly enjoyed the
give and take of the debate and had a question of his own. “Teacher, which
commandment in the law is the greatest?”
If you didn’t have the New Testament, how would you answer this
question? Mark tells us this lawyer had
an answer but he wanted to test Jesus to see what He would say.
The Greatest Commandment
Jesus answered by quoting from the Shema found in Deuteronomy 6:5,6.
This verse was memorized by every Jew from the earliest years. Matthew records the part that gives the
actual commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, and all your mind.” In other
words, our entire being is involved in obeying this command to love God. But Jesus did not stop there. He also gave a second command quoted from
Leviticus 19:18 that is “like” this greatest commandment. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Then He added this simple observation: “All the Law and the Prophets hang (or
depend) on these two commandments.” The intent
and basis of the whole Bible derives from these two.
In other words, if one truly wants to understand what God
wants of us, it is that we love Him with our entire being and that we love our
neighbor as we love ourselves. All the
other commandments are merely clarifying ways to live that out. When we understand this, we also better
understand why we sometimes struggle to obey God. The underlying question is—do we really love
God—and others—more than myself?
Unpacking Love
We ought to unpack this idea of loving God with our entire
being. First, what is love? This is the well-known Greek word agapao
meaning to look out for the best interests of others with no strings attached. This is talking about the kind of motive that
should energize everything we do.
Now how can we “look out for the best interests” of God? In reality, we understand that God doesn’t
have a “need” for us to fulfill, yet God has given us a responsibility that He
desires us to accomplish according to His will (on earth as it is in
heaven!) While we don’t have unlimited
free reign, still we have just enough to accept or reject God’s desire for
us. This is why Jesus says in John 14:15,
“If you love me, keep my commandments.”
All the other commandments of God are wrapped up in doing what God
wants—ultimately because we love God.
Loving God and Others
There is a difference in the way we love God and the way we
love others. When we have a clear command, we just obey God but sometimes it
requires some thought as to what action God is asking of us just as we must do
when we are trying to love others. It
takes loving God with our mind, too!
Words, Activities, and Thoughts
So, loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind (our
entire being) means that our words, our activities, and our thoughts are
intended to reflect love for God and what He wants of us. Not just our outer life – like the Pharisees
believed.
It would be an interesting study to examine those
commandments that God gave in the Old Testament that are hard to understand
(yes, and some in the New as well) in light of this understanding that all
God’s commandments depend on love for God.
Second Greatest Commandment
But, let’s move on to the second greatest commandment: Loving your neighbor as yourself. I have lost count of the number of times I
have heard someone assert without proof that you can’t really love other people
until you learn to love yourself. This
is supposed to be the logical next step in following this commandment. “Love my neighbor as myself.” What if I hate myself? Jesus wouldn’t want me to hate my
neighbor! So some people say, “First I
need to learn to quit hating myself.”
The assumption being that since a lot of people are harming themselves
they must hate themselves. And that all
of us have a bit of self-loathing that we must learn to conquer before we set
out to indulge the neighbors. I agree
that many people do engage in practices that are harmful to themselves but it
is not out of self-loathing that we harm ourselves. It is rather a cry for help. Sometimes, we may loathe what we have done
because we have hurt someone or have failed someone. But, we actually love ourselves so much that sometimes
we will do anything – no matter how crazy it sounds to others—to receive the
attention of others. When we fail at
receiving the attention we crave we loathe our foolish attempts but we still
want that unreachable goal— to be loved.
The fact is that we are all inevitably self-centered. It’s the way we were born. And Jesus is pointing out that God wants us
to direct that same passion that we put into serving ourselves into serving
others.
Who is My Neighbor?
The story of the Good Samaritan is one of Jesus’
illustrations for loving your neighbor.
There the question was, “Who is my neighbor?” We don’t have to go to Africa or Outer
Mongolia to find someone to love. It’s
the person in need right where you are.
That’s your neighbor. She is at
your place of work. He is at your bank
or grocery store. If they are in need of
something that you can provide, then they are your neighbor.
How to Love My Neighbor
We love God by obeying Him.
How do we love our neighbor? By
taking the same care for them as for yourself, in order of God’s
priorities. If they are bleeding to
death, you stop the bleeding before you get them a hot meal. If they aren’t prepared for eternity, you
don’t necessarily stop everything and whip out your Bible, but everything you
do for them is to help open them up to hearing the gospel. They might listen better if they aren’t
hungry, for example, but ultimately my neighbor, like all people, needs to be
prepared for eternity and their window of opportunity is unknown.
When my friend Dave was riding an ambulance holding in his
arms a high school student who had been crushed by a truck, He knew there was
very little time left as the young man bled to death. He spoke to Him of eternity and was able to
reassure Him and later His parents—not because He had administered CPR or
tightened bandages—but because He had loved him the way Jesus loved him. Fortunately, we are not usually teetering on
eternity in such a precarious way with our neighbor—but we just do not know how
much time we have left.
It is interesting that Mark records this same event we see
in Matthew but he also tells us that afterward the lawyer was quite impressed
by Jesus’ answer and agreed with Him.
Mark says that Jesus told him, “You are not far from the kingdom of
heaven.” When we agree with Jesus we are
getting ‘warm.’
What Does God Really Want?
God wants us to adjust our self-centered priorities we were
born with to being other-centered—God first, then other people in our lives.
The Missing Piece
It looks like we need a lot of help with this adjustment! The one piece everyone seemed to be missing
we will discuss next time.
© 2018 Eric Thimell
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