But he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thine understanding; and thy neighbour as thyself.
A lawyer — an expert in the law of Moses — has just asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus sends him back to the law. The man answers by joining two commands into one sentence, but can he stand on the standard he states so well?
A right answer, a wrong heart
His answer states the law's duty perfectly. Commentators look past the answer to the man giving it:
The lawyer was not in earnest; he was a mere theorist. There was no real concern about his soul, no sense of his own condition or of what God is... This was excellent as a statement of duty: nothing could be better; but how had he done it? And what hope was there for his soul on any such footing as this?... He could not do it, and on that ground he could not live. He was dead, though he did not know it himself, morally dead while he lived.
Not the heart only — the whole being
Why does the law demand love at all — and how much of a person does it ask for?
The law demanded love. That very fact shows the demand came from God's own nature, and that nature is love — "God is love." And the law does not just ask for love from the whole heart, as people sometimes say. It asks for love from the whole being!
The command first came attached to a statement about who God is. That statement is the reason for the "all":
First, God is one and He never changes: "The LORD our God, the LORD is one." On this rests His claim to the undivided loyalty of man... If there is only one God, there is no other to share the heart with. 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.
Two clauses, ten commandments
His two clauses fold the Ten Commandments in half:
In the first four commandments we have the claims of law in relation to God, and in the last six those claims in relation to man... If such a demand as that is made upon fallen man, he can no more meet it than create a world.
"As yourself" — measure, not ceiling
Writers warn against reading the second clause as a limit on how far kindness must go:
Some read the second part of the great commandment as a limit on how far love to our neighbour must go, as though we need not love him better than that. Weigh the obligation that way and we lose the very principle. Self-love becomes the judge of how far we go in kindness to our neighbour. What is meant instead is a holy urgency that joins another's interests to our own in unity of love, not setting his claims against ours... Love to our neighbour is different in nature from love to God.
What the command cannot give
The verse states what ought to be. It does not supply the power:
The law does not give life, and it does not give strength... Neither does the law give a motive to love. It tells me to love God with all my heart (and conscience admits I ought to do so), but why? Because I shall be cursed if I do not. But that will not produce love... Have you loved God with all your heart? Has there been no love of anything else?
The Man who answered it
The command shows its full worth only in one life:
All this love, this costly and needed love, we have in the Son of God, the Stranger from heaven, the True Good Samaritan. He kept the law of love to His neighbour — He alone. So we must learn the way from Him. We must do "likewise," and kindle our heart at His heart, if we hope in any way to answer that end of the law... We see nothing worthy of that word... until we trace the well-spent life of Jesus.
What threats could never produce, God's own love does:
The law says, "You shall love the Lord your God," and conscience approves this. It also says, Do this, or you shall die. But that terrible alternative can never bring my affections back to Him from whom they have wandered. "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). An apostle certifies this as the Christian experience of grace, and it fulfils in us the righteousness of the law.
Summary
- Love demanded. God asks for love because love is what He is. And He asks it from the whole being, not just the heart.
- Love owed. God is one, so no rival can divide the heart. The second clause ties your neighbour's interests to your own instead of capping them.
- Love exposed. The command tells you what you ought to be. It cannot change what you are. Conscience agrees with it, but fear of a curse has never produced love.
- Love embodied. One Man loved God and His neighbour like this. We learn love by tracing His life, not by measuring our own.
- Love returned. The law could only demand love. Grace produces it: we love because He first loved us. Only then is the law's righteousness fulfilled in us.