But concerning the dead that they rise, have ye not read in the book of Moses, in [the section of] the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, *I* [am] the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
The Sadducees denied the resurrection, and they argued from the books of Moses. Jesus answers them from Moses too, and the whole case turns on the tense of one verb.
The Lord could have quoted a plainer resurrection passage. He chose this one because of who was asking, and because of a promise never kept while Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived.
He takes this passage, not because it is the clearest Scripture in the Old Testament, but because it is in the books of Moses. These Sadducees valued those books most. God never gave Abraham, Isaac or Jacob the land of Israel to own while they were alive in their natural bodies. Yet He did promise them the land — not just to their children, but to themselves. So they must rise to have that land as promised to them.
By calling His source "the book of Moses," Jesus also says who wrote Exodus.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, the infallible Son of God, perfect in knowledge, said these words to the Sadducees. In this way He gives positive evidence that Exodus is the book of Moses. Christ and His apostles quote Exodus twenty-five times. To reject the inspiration of Exodus is to reject the inspiration of the entire New Testament. Worse than that, it is to reject the testimony of the Son of God.
God spoke at the bush long after those three men had died. What He called Himself then settles the question.
When the incident at the bush happened, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been long dead, yet God still speaks of Himself as their God. He is not, however, the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Though dead to this scene, they still live. They will rise again to enjoy the promises of God. Since sin has come in, those promises can only be fulfilled on resurrection ground.
The setting matters here as much as the wording.
God sent Moses out from the bush to be their deliverer. He sent him under that title, "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob" — as that "I am" who had looked on His people and cared for them. The Sadducees' creed could never have been the good news of that deliverance, nor its inspiration. A living God in covenant with men meant life, not death; and if death was there, then a life supreme above it. So resurrection was the necessary filling out of such a declaration. The hand God held out to man was not to clasp the listless fingers of a corpse.
Surviving death and rising from death are not the same claim. This verse reaches the second, not just the first.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died long before God spoke to Moses this way; yet He was still their God. So they did exist, for He is not a God of that which has no existence. Further, though they were dead, their body was an essential part of their person. Resurrection of the body must therefore take place. Abraham could not be complete without his body. So Exodus 3:6 taught by implication the truth the Sadducees denied. From the Lord's use of it we learn this: where a truth has no direct statement, Scripture may still teach it by implication.
The Lord traced their mistake to two things. The second shapes how we read the first.
They "knew not the Scriptures, nor the power of God." These are the two things needed. If we do not recognise and own the power of God, we limit the working and reach of the Scriptures to our own. Then we go astray even in interpreting them. That is a great evil, and perhaps not a rare one. The testimony comes from God. He views things in His own light, and He accomplishes His own thoughts by His own power. Leave this out, and we are shut up to the small conclusions, results and measures of our own minds and strength.
- Living. God said "I am," not "I was," of three men long buried. He is the God of the living, and that one word carries the argument.
- Promised. God promised the land to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob themselves. They never owned it, so they must rise to receive it.
- Complete. A man is not himself without his body. So life with God after death still needs resurrection — a truth this verse teaches by implication.
- Covenanted. At the bush God sent out a deliverer. A living God in covenant with men means life — not a hand reaching out to clasp a corpse.
- Grounded. Their error had two roots: not knowing the Scriptures, and not knowing the power of God. Christ answered from "the book of Moses" and staked His own authority on it.
He is not the God of [the] dead, but of [the] living. *Ye* therefore greatly err.
The Sadducees came to Jesus with a marriage puzzle meant to make resurrection look absurd. He answered them from the books of Moses, which they valued most. His closing words settle far more than their puzzle. They touch what death is, and whether God keeps His word to people who have already died.
Before untangling their story, Jesus named what lay underneath it.
Next came the Sadducees, asking Him to unravel the marriage tangle they put forward. He did this and convicted them of their folly; but before doing so He revealed its underlying causes. They did not know the Scriptures — that was ignorance. They did not know the power of God — that was unbelief. These twin pillars held up their unbelieving error. Modern unbelief of the Sadducee type rests on exactly the same two pillars. They constantly misquote, misinterpret, or otherwise mangle Scripture. They think of God as anything but Almighty — as just a man, though with larger powers than ours.
The force of the sentence depends on what the Sadducees meant by death. In their view, the dead had stopped existing altogether.
"I am the God of Abraham" meant that Abraham existed when He spoke. He could not be the God of one who had no existence. He could not be in relationship with a person who did not exist. He could not be — in the Sadducees' idea of what the dead were — "the God of the dead."
Jesus chose His text with these men in mind. From it He drew an argument about a promise never yet kept.
He takes this passage, not because it is the clearest Scripture in the Old Testament. He takes it because it is in the books of Moses, which these Sadducees valued most. God never gave the land of Israel to Abraham, Isaac or Jacob to own while they were alive in their natural bodies. Yet He did promise them the land — not merely to their children, but to themselves. So they must rise to have that land as promised to them... God declared Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, and that proves the resurrection. God cannot fail to keep the promise He made them.
Denying resurrection was no small mistake about the afterlife.
It was in this view a fatal error, for it struck at the root of God's faithfulness to His promises. Indeed we now know that it is the very centre of all our hopes.
A present-tense relationship carries a future with it.
When the incident at the bush happened, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been dead a long time. Yet God still speaks of Himself as their God. He is not, however, the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Though dead to this scene, they still live. They will rise again to enjoy the promises of God. Since sin has come in, God can only fulfil those promises on resurrection ground.
A living spirit is not yet the finished picture.
The bodies of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have died, but their spirits live. So they must be raised in the end, because man is not complete without his spirit and soul and body (1 Thess. 5:23). The Lord therefore emphasised a second time how great the error of the Sadducees was.
His answer appeals to something a person can recognise without being taught.
Our Lord is now attacked by another form of unbelief — the Sadducee kind. Now see the beautiful simplicity of the wisdom of the mind of Christ. He brings them back to the burning bush and the voice of God that spoke from it. His point to them is that "He is not God of the dead, but of the living." Our natural conscience tells us that He is the God of the living.
- Error — Their trouble had two sources: not knowing the Scriptures, and not knowing the power of God. Modern unbelief stands on the same two pillars.
- Name — At the bush God still called Himself their God, in the present tense. He cannot be the God of someone who does not exist, so Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not gone.
- Promise — God promised the land to those three men themselves, and they never owned it. To deny resurrection strikes at the root of God's faithfulness.
- Body — Their spirits live now. But man is not complete without spirit, soul and body, so the living must be raised.
- Verdict — Jesus did not soften it. He told them a second time that their error was great.
And one of the scribes who had come up, and had heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he had answered them well, demanded of him, Which is [the] first commandment of all?
This scribe comes last, after priests, Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducees have each tried the Lord with questions and fallen silent. His question about the greatest commandment was a live dispute among Israel's teachers, but Mark also lets us see something stirring in the man himself.
Every group in the nation had already had its turn. Each one failed on the ground it claimed as its own.
After this, no one dared ask the Lord any question. Representatives of all classes came with their questions to test the Lord — priests, rulers, Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees and lawyers. They only found themselves exposed and silenced. The Pharisee, who claimed to uphold religion, had not rendered to God the things that are God's. The Herodian, who claimed to maintain the political interest of Caesar, had not rendered to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. The Sadducee, who boasted in intellect, was remarkable for his ignorance. And the scribe, who expounded the law, had not kept the law. However opposed to one another, they are all united in opposition to Christ.
Scribes were the men who explained the law. Asking which commandment comes first was not idle curiosity. It belonged to a system that ranked the commandments.
The scribes believed that the commandments differed in value. Some, they thought, were worth more than others in making up the sum of righteousness a man ought to reach. Here the Lord answers without turning the question back to confuse those who asked it. Instead He establishes the two great pillars of man's responsibility. These are the unity of God, and man's duty towards Him and towards his neighbour. This was Israel's faith, and Israel's duty towards all. The Lord does not quote the ten commandments, but the great principles of the law as to the whole duty of man.
Matthew's account of this scene says the man came to test Jesus.
Mark lets us learn the exercise of that man's soul. Matthew tells us only that he came to test the Lord, as one of the representatives of the rebellious nation. But Mark shows us the man himself, and what was going on within him. Mark then shows us how the Lord took him up in the same way, saying to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
Both motives can sit in one man at once, and often do.
How apt we are to fight with the truth just when it is gaining access into our hearts! And how often the thoughts that work together to move us are contrary to each other!
The Lord does not pick a winner among the ten commandments. He goes back to Deuteronomy, to one word that holds them all.
The Lord's answer brushed aside all their elaborate arguments and quibbles about one or other of the ten commandments. He went straight to the word in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Here was a commandment that brought all the other commandments within its scope. God demanded to be absolutely supreme in the affections of His creatures; if only He were, everything else would fall into its right place. Here is the great master-commandment that governs everything. There was great encouragement in this commandment. Why should God care about having the undivided love of His creature? Faith answers this question by saying: because He Himself is love. Being love, and loving His creature, even though that creature is lost in his sins, He cannot be satisfied without his creature's love.
The answer opens with who God is, before it says anything about duty.
Notice how vital the first words here are to the whole matter: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one." This is basic to all obedience on man's part. If the unity of the Godhead is not confessed, the very spirit of obedience is lacking.
The Lord gives two commandments, and He does not measure them the same way.
He sums up the heart of God's law in these two extracts. One is the love of God, which is unlimited. The other is the love of one's neighbour, not with all the soul and strength, but "as yourself." The first is loving God more than oneself, to the exclusion of every other object as a rival. The second is loving one's neighbour as oneself. In effect, he who loves God and his neighbour has fulfilled the law, as the Apostle says. Grace goes further than that — even to the total renunciation of self.
- Question. The scribes ranked commandments by value. This man asks which stands first. The Lord answers not from the ten commandments, but from the great principles that hold man's whole duty.
- Foundation. The answer begins with who God is — one Lord. Where that is not confessed, obedience has nothing to stand on.
- Scope. Love of God is the master-commandment that contains every other. He asks for it because He Himself is love, and where He is supreme, everything else takes its right place.
- Measure. Love God without limit. Love your neighbour "as yourself" — and grace goes further still, to the giving up of self.
- Man. Matthew shows the testing motive, Mark the movement of the heart. Both are true of the same man, and the Lord meets him where the movement is.
And Jesus answered him, [The] first commandment of all [is], Hear, Israel the Lord our God is one Lord;
A scribe steps out of the crowd of hostile questioners with an honest question: which command ranks first? Jesus answers with the words Israel recited every day. He states a fact about God before He names any duty, and commentators treat that opening line as the hinge for everything else.
Teachers of the law had a running debate about ranking the commandments. The Lord does not join it on its own terms.
The scribes believed that the commandments differed in value. Some, they thought, counted for more than others in making up the sum of righteousness a man ought to reach. This time the Lord answers without turning the question back on those who asked it to confuse them. Instead He sets out the two great pillars of man's responsibility: the unity of God, and man's duty towards Him and towards his neighbour.
The sentence Jesus quotes was not new to His hearers. It had a name and a fixed place in daily Jewish life.
The words quoted by the Lord in verse 29 and following are those of the Shema, which it was the duty of males to repeat morning and evening.
But the daily recital carried a demand Israel had not met.
It is true that Israel boasted in their great "Shema." In it Moses called them back to the privilege and the responsibility of what God had revealed under the law. "Hear, O Israel," Moses urged, "the LORD our God is one LORD," and then he summed up the ten commandments. But Israel was the "deaf servant" of Jehovah; and now God had raised up another Prophet.
Notice the order. The Lord does not begin with what a person must do. He begins with who God is.
Notice, though, how vital the first words here are: "Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord." This is basic to all obedience on man's part. If people do not confess the unity of the Godhead, the very spirit of obedience is lacking.
For Israel this line was not a private belief.
This truth lay at the very foundation of the Jewish way of life. It was the great centre round which the people were to rally. As long as they held it, they were a happy, prosperous, fruitful people; but when it was let go, all was gone. It was their great national defence, and the thing that was to mark them off from all the nations of the east.
In the ESV the line reads "the Lord our God, the Lord is one"; older versions render it "one Lord." The Hebrew sets a plural word for God beside a singular name for the Lord.
God, who gave speech to our first parents, must have designed this special plural for a very definite purpose. With that in mind the verse reads: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD [Jehovah, singular] our God [Elohim, plural] is one LORD [Jehovah, singular]." Here is a striking statement of the Oneness of God, yet with equal care it gives a very clear and unmistakable hint of the truth of the Holy Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One in Three, and Three in One, ONE GOD.
The scribe agreed with the answer. One thing still escaped him.
The Lord told him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." However, the questioner did not realise that He who stood before him in that hour was Jehovah Himself, the giver of the law.
After the truth about God comes the command to love Him. That command hits a problem.
The law commands man to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength, and with all his mind. But the commandment, just as it stands, achieves nothing, because in this case man is a sinner and loveless. No law ever produced or called out love. It may demand but cannot create love.
God closes the gap from His own side.
How glad are our hearts that He desires nothing less! How we bless His holy name that His love, fully proved, has produced love. What the law could not do, His love has done.
- Hear first. The greatest commandment opens with a call to listen, not to act. God tells Israel who He is before He tells them what to do.
- One Lord. That confession was Israel's centre and defence. While they held it they flourished. When they let it go, everything went with it.
- Then obey. Obedience grows out of that confession. Where people do not confess the unity of the Godhead, the very spirit of obedience is missing.
- Then love. What follows asks for the whole person, and law can demand love without ever creating it.
- Then Christ. The scribe agreed with every word and still missed the giver of the law standing in front of him. His love, not the command, produces the love the law asked for.
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thine understanding, and with all thy strength. This is [the] first commandment.
A scribe — a teacher of the law — asks Jesus which single command stands above all the rest. The answer reaches back to Israel's oldest confession: God is one.
The scribes had built a whole system of ranking commands, and the Lord's reply cut across it.
The scribes believed that the commandments differed in value. Some, they thought, were worth more than others in making up the sum of righteousness a man ought to reach. The Lord answers in this case without turning the question back on those who asked it, to their confusion. Instead He sets up the two great pillars of man's responsibility. These are the unity of God, and man's duty towards Him and towards his neighbour. The Lord does not quote the ten commandments, but the great principles of the law as to the whole duty of man.
The command does not begin with love. It begins with a statement about who God is, and that order matters.
When asking which is the first commandment, he evidently has in mind that which is first in importance. The Lord's answer is from Deuteronomy 6:5. Notice, though, how vital the first words are here: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one." This is basic to all obedience on man's part. If the unity of the Godhead is not confessed, the very spirit of obedience is lacking.
The claim behind the command belongs to the Creator, and it reaches the whole inner man:
If there is only one God, there is no other to divide the heart with; and the Lord claims the whole of it in the most absolute way. The words stand for the inner man, with all his affections, and in their full energy. This is the reasonable claim of the Creator: the full answer of the heart from the man He made. In His service alone do all man's faculties find their full occupation, rest, and satisfaction.
Heart, soul, mind and strength are not four separate boxes to fill. They name one whole person.
The law's demand was love. That very fact shows it was God's own nature which desired this, and that nature is love — "God is love." The law does not just demand love from the whole heart, as is sometimes said. It demands love from the whole being!
The second command that follows uses a smaller measure than the first, and the difference is deliberate.
He sums up the heart of God's law in these two quotations. The love of God is unlimited. The love of one's neighbour is not with all the soul and strength, but "as yourself." The first means loving God more than yourself, so that nothing else competes with Him. The second means loving your neighbour as yourself. In effect, whoever loves God and his neighbour has fulfilled the law, as the Apostle says. Grace goes further than that — even to the total renunciation of self.
A law can demand love. Whether it can produce love is another question.
The law commands man here to love God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength, and with all his mind. But the commandment, just as it is, is wholly unavailing, because in this case man is a sinner and loveless. No law ever produced or called out love. It may demand but cannot create love; it is not within the nature or power of law to do so. God knew this perfectly; and in the gospel He becomes Himself the Great Agent.
One person answered the demand fully, and He was the one speaking:
The sense of duty was perfect in Him, as also grace and divine love; One greater than these... here we find the perfect rule of walk and of the duty of man on earth according to the law — not the part that was obvious to everyone (that is, the ten commandments, which come to mind first), but principles scattered here and there through the books of the Old Testament, which shone out everywhere for Him.
There is a reason God asks for this love, and it lies in what He is.
In this commandment there lay an element of great encouragement. Why should God care about possessing the undivided love of His creature? Faith would answer this question by saying — because He Himself is love. He is love, and He loves His creature, even though that creature is lost in his sins. So nothing but the love of His creature will satisfy Him.
- One God — the command rests on the confession that comes before it; where God's oneness is not owned, obedience has no root.
- One whole self — heart, soul, mind and strength name the entire person, not a set of separate religious duties.
- One measure — love God above self, and your neighbour as yourself. Grace goes further still, to giving up self altogether.
- One failure — the law can demand this love, but it cannot produce it; in Christ alone the sense of duty was perfect.
- One reason — God asks for undivided love because He is love, and love is never satisfied with less.
And a second like it [is] this Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is not another commandment greater than these.
Jesus has just named the first commandment — total love for God — and He does not stop there. He adds a second and closes the subject: nothing outranks these two, and the question left hanging is what "as yourself" really asks of us.
One commentator shows where the Lord found this second command, and why it grows out of the first:
For the second commandment the Lord referred the man to Leviticus 19:18, another unexpected passage. But this commandment clearly springs out of the first. No one can have both the ability and the desire to treat his neighbour rightly unless he is first right with his God. But love is the essence of this second commandment no less than of the first. To love one's neighbour as oneself is the limit under the law… However, "Love is the fulfilling of the law" (Romans 13:10), and this is said in connection with this second commandment.
People are quick to treat decency toward others as the whole of religion:
But men make the second first, last, and only commandment, because in this world there are few who have any respect for God. People are ready to assume they have done all that is asked of them. They act fair and square with their neighbours. They do not trespass on what may be supposed to be their rights.
You can read the phrase as a ceiling: love this far and no further. One writer warns that this reading destroys the very thing it tries to measure:
Some take the second part of the great commandment as though it set the limit of how far love to our neighbour should go. They think we need not love him any better than that. But if we weigh the obligation like this, we shall likely lose the very principle entirely. Self-love then becomes the judge of how far we go in kindness to our neighbour. The real principle is a holy urgency, in which another person is identified with you in interest, in unity of love.
The two commands do not ask for the same thing. God gets love without limit; the neighbour gets love on a human scale:
He sums up the heart of the law of God in these two extracts. The love of God is unlimited. The love of one's neighbour is not with all the soul and strength, but "as yourself." The first is loving God more than oneself, leaving no other object as a rival. The second is loving one's neighbour as oneself.
Because this single sentence gathers up every command about how we treat people, keeping it settles the rest at once:
In the variety of action specified here, man shows his habitual breach of the second table of the law, whose provisions are mainly toward man. Love is the fulfilling of the law; it thinks no evil, and does no harm. Love of one's neighbour therefore secures the keeping of the various prohibitions against trespassing on his rights.
Who counts as a neighbour? One writer says the parable of the good Samaritan turns that question around:
Some read the parable of the good Samaritan and conclude too quickly that the Lord had answered the question "Who is my neighbour?" Their idea is that wherever there is need, we should do our duty toward our neighbour. But notice: the man who fell among thieves is not spoken of as a neighbour whom the other acts toward. It was the Samaritan who was neighbour to him. The lawyer only wished to justify himself. He wanted a clear list of everyone who had a claim on him, so that he might have no outstanding debts… Where love is at work, it does not ask "Who?" It takes its own delight in acting, apart from the question of who deserves it. The one is meeting a claim; the other is meeting need, with no question of claim at all.
One writer sets the law's measure beside what grace asks:
The law makes your love for yourself the measure of your love for your neighbour. Grace asks you to give up yourself entirely. In a sinful world, I want something more than the former. I have to do with people who wrong, insult, harass and outrage me. Christ did more than love us as He loved Himself; He gave Himself up entirely.
So who has actually kept it?
But the Lord goes on to insist that the second is like the first, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." Who does this? Today's "permissive society" says the flat opposite: "live for yourself; forget your neighbour." Only the Lord Jesus has ever obeyed this law.
- Source. Love for a neighbour springs out of love for God; no one treats people rightly who is not first right with God.
- Measure. God gets love without limit. The neighbour gets love "as yourself" — a phrase that ties you to him, instead of letting self-love set a cap.
- Scope. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and that is said about this very command toward our neighbour.
- Reach. The question is not who has a claim on me, but whom I will become a neighbour to — need, not entitlement.
- Fulfilment. Only Jesus ever kept it, and He went past it: grace asks not for love measured by self, but for self given up entirely.