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.