Which Is The Great Commandment In The Law?

Which Is the Great Commandment in the Law?

—Matthew 22:36

What is your primary purpose? Everything has a primary purpose, and when it ceases to fulfill its purpose, it is useless. The primary purpose of a pen, for instance, is to write. I would rather have an inexpensive plastic pen that wrote every time I picked it up than an expensive German pen that didn’t. The primary purpose of a car is to take me from point A to point B. I would rather have a less expensive but reliable car that started every time and always ran well than a shiny new one that started only half the time.

When Jesus was asked, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” He went straight to the heart of your primary purpose and mine. Without hesitating He replied, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself ’ ” (Matthew 22:37–39).

Including the Ten Commandments, the Jewish Torah—comprised of the first five books of the Bible—contains 613 commandments. When the Jewish lawyer posed the question, Jesus used the phrase “first and great” to clarify that He was also taking into consideration the Ten Commandments. Jesus went on to say, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (v. 40).

Loving God (the vertical dimension of life) and loving one another (the horizontal dimension) represent all that the Ten Commandments address. The first four commandments (having no other gods before Him, not making an image or likeness, not taking His name in vain, and remembering to keep the Sabbath day) have to do with our relationship with God, the upward, or vertical, expression. The last six (honoring our parents, not murdering, not committing adultery, not stealing, not lying, and not coveting) speak about our relationship with other people, the outward, or horizontal, expression. So, although the Pharisees were “testing” Jesus when they asked this question (v. 35), He simply told them that all the commandments boil down to this: love. According to Jesus, we who are His followers are to love God supremely and to love people around us. Recognizing the role of love in God’s kingdom, the apostle Paul later wrote, “The greatest of these [faith, hope, and love] is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

THE VERTICAL DIMENSION

When asked to identify the “great” commandment of the hundreds of commandments in the Bible, Jesus emphasized that the “first and great commandment” is to love God with all that we are. To make love for God supreme over love for our fellow man is in diametric opposition to the world’s ways. Humanistic thought tells us that the way to love God is to love man. It says, “If you love man and are immersed in all sorts of humanistic, social experiments, you will be on your way to loving God.” But Jesus said the opposite. He knew that we can never love one another as we should unless we love Him first and foremost. When we love God with “all [our] heart, with all [our] soul, and with all [our] mind,” there is no possibility of not loving “our neighbors as ourselves.”

Many years ago I fell head over heels in love with my wife, Susie, for many reasons. One, we liked to be together—and we liked to be together . . . alone. We wrote each other love letters and, separated by miles while we were in college, we spoke on the phone every night. If you love the Lord Jesus, you will want to be with Him. You will want to be with Him . . . alone. You will not just read His love letter to you, but you will hang on every word in the Bible. And you will speak with Him daily in prayer.

What is the greatest of all the commandments? It is the command to love God with every fiber of our being. After all, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

THE HORIZONTAL DIMENSION

The vertical dimension of a life that honors God is our developing and maintaining an intimate, constant relationship with Him. The horizontal dimension has to do with our activity toward those around us. It is of note that in Luke’s account, this question comes in the context of the story of the good Samaritan where our love is revealed in what we do for others (Luke 10:25–37). Genuine love is always expressed by action. In fact, Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). And one of those commandments is to love one another.

Unfortunately, many of us have real difficulty obeying this second commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as your-self.” Some of us are void of self-love and self-respect. When that’s the case, loving others as we love ourselves would not be healthy, life giving, or appreciated by those we “loved.” Jesus knew full well that we would face this dilemma. So for thirty-three years He showed us what genuine love looks like: He was the very embodiment of love. Up until then, the best we could do was live on the level of this old commandment of loving others as we loved ourselves. He showed us by His life that true love is unlimited, unchanging, unselfish, and unconditional. The very natural self-love we know all too well is the very antithesis of all those things. Therefore, on the night before He was crucified, Jesus gave us a “new commandment.” As He was about to leave us, He said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35).

This call to love is not merely a suggestion, nor is it an option for us to consider. Jesus commanded His followers then and us today to love one another as He loved us. To be more specific, we are to live and love one another with an unlimited, unchanging, unselfish, and unconditional love, just as He loved us then and continues to love us still. How can we possibly love like this? We can’t. It is impossible in our own strength. Only if we love God above and beyond all else, only if we love Him with all our soul and mind, will His love, abiding in us, overflow through us to the people around us. Only then will we be able to love one another as He loved us.

Q & A: “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus didn’t hesitate to respond: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). Love is the oxygen of God’s kingdom. Love is to be the distinguishing characteristic that shows we belong to Him. You have a single primary purpose in life, and it is—to paraphrase the words of the “first and great commandment”—to love the Lord your God with every part of your being!