Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?
The scene is the temple courts. One group after another has come to test Jesus with questions, and each has failed. Now a Pharisee trained in the law steps forward. His question sounds honest. Matthew tells us he asked it to test Him.
Jesus had just silenced the Sadducees over the resurrection, and the Pharisees regrouped.
So the Pharisees hear that He has silenced the Sadducees, and they gather together. They come not to acknowledge His divine wisdom, sadly, but to tempt Him yet again. Still the questioner has been affected, as Mark tells us, and something better lies hidden under the test question he puts. Matthew says nothing of this. He is taken up with where the nation as a whole stands toward the Lord, and the state of one man does not show that.
The word "which" assumes some commandments outrank others. Israel's teachers argued over exactly that.
The scribes counted 613 commandments in all in the Old Testament. They sorted them into laws they thought important and laws they thought less important. The Lord also points out a difference. He calls the commandment to love God the great and first commandment. Yet at once He puts the commandment to love your neighbour on the same level (Matt. 22:36-40).
Behind the counting lay a way of thinking about God. Obedience worked like score-keeping.
It was a question much debated among the Jews. Each commandment had a special value for them, and keeping each one earned so many good marks from God, as in an examination. The Lord takes the occasion, given to Him in the ways of God, to establish the basic principles of the divine law.
A trap question invites a small answer. Jesus gives the opposite.
He who came full of grace and truth never lowered the law. At once He gives its sum and substance in both its parts — Godward and manward.
The questioner had the ten commandments of Exodus 20 in view.
He was thinking of the ten Commandments in Exodus 20, but the Lord turned him to Deuteronomy 6:5, and added Leviticus 19:18. The demand of the law is summed up in one word — love. First, love to God; second, love to one's neighbour. When Paul tells us, "Love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10), he is only stating in other words what Jesus said here (verse 40).
The two commandments sound like the gospel in miniature. Darby marks the difference.
Everything in man hung on these two commandments. This is the summary of what man ought to be, the root and the measure of human righteousness. It is in no way a revelation of divine love. It is not a question of grace, nor of an open way for the sinner to come to God. It is the perfect rule of what a man should be.
The commandment names love as the requirement. Naming it and producing it are two different things.
The law does not give life, and it does not give strength. Man's great need is power to do right. I may know well enough what is right. I may even want to do right. Yet something else has power over my heart, so that I do wrong. Neither does the law give a motive to love. It tells me to love God with all my heart (and my conscience admits I should), but why? Because I shall be cursed if I do not. But that will not produce love.
God Himself has supplied what the commandment demanded. The order of the two matters.
Love to God and love to our neighbour is what the law required! The Lord Jesus said the second was like to the first (Matt. 22:39); but note, it is the second and not the first! Response to God's love comes before love rightly flows out to others. Attempted reversal of this order has produced dire iniquity. Above all, the law demanded love to God; it could not produce it, but God's own love has brought this about in those who are now His children.
The deepest irony of the scene is one the questioner never saw.
The Jewish scribes, the lawyers, argued in many ways about the greatest commandment. The Lord does not enter into these disputes at all. Once more His answer shows perfect wisdom... However, the questioner did not realise who stood before him in that hour. It was Jehovah Himself, the giver of the law.
- Tested. The question was a trap, not a search for truth. Yet Mark records that something better was stirring in the man who asked it.
- Ranked. The scribes sorted 613 commandments into greater and lesser, as if obedience earned marks in an examination. Jesus answers on completely different ground.
- Summed. He passes over Exodus 20 and goes to Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. He sums up the whole law in one word: love — first Godward, then manward.
- Exposed. The summary is the perfect measure of what a person ought to be, not a revelation of grace. The law demands love, but it gives neither motive nor strength.
- Supplied. God's own love has produced in His children what the commandment could only demand. The order never changes: loved first, then loving.
And he said to him, Thou shalt love [the] Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy understanding.
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