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.