The top two commands. [Mk 12.29-31]

Mark 12.29-31 KJV

29And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: Dt 6.4-5 this is the first commandment. 31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Lv 19.18 There is none other commandment greater than these.

 

Jesus was asked by a scribe what the greatest command is, and this is the Gospel of Mark’s version of his answer. He quotes two bible passages—and it’s not a bad idea to memorize these passages as well. The reason I suggest memorizing Jesus’s whole Mark statement is to include his endorsement: “There is none other commandment greater than these.”

(Or whatever other translation you wanna know it in. I present memory verses in King James Version because it’s the version I memorized, plus whenever I quote KJV, people immediately recognize it as “bible language.” But if your favorite is ESV or NASB or NLT—or even The PIrate Bible—go for it.)

Mark also includes the whole text from Deuteronomy. Jews memorize this passage as the שְׁמַ֖ע/šemá, “the Shema,” taken from the very first word of the verse, which means “listen” but we often translate it as “hear.”

Deuteronomy 6.4-5 KJV

4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Other gospels skip verse 4, and go right to the “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Mark includes the “Listen, Israel” part because it’s important: Before we start loving God, we gotta identify which God we mean, and that’d be YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and Moses; the Father of Jesus. He’s not a new god whom Jesus is introducing for the very first time through his teachings. Same God the first-century Israelis already knew. Same God most monotheists know, whether we call him our Higher Power, the Almighty, God, Lord, Ha-Shem, Elohim, Allah, Deus, Dios, Dieu, Theos, or whatever other language you like to get religious in. But if you’re gonna follow Jesus, you need to get to know him and follow him as Jesus teaches him, because only Jesus explains him. Jn 1.18

Then, loving neighbors:

Leviticus 19.18 KJV

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Whenever God commanded something that particularly reflects his character—something he particularly wanted the Hebrews to pay attention to, ’cause he means it—he’d cap it with “I am the LORD.” He doesn’t want his people to take petty revenge, nor hold grudges, nor hate the people of their homeland. And if you’re one of those people who insist God was only speaking about fellows of the same ethnic background, Jesus overtly taught otherwise in his Good Samaritan Story. Which, not coincidentally, follows Jesus’s top two commandments in the Gospel of Luke. Lk 10.25-29

Loving God versus loving neighbors.

Plenty of people claim they “love God.” They don’t really.

Usually because they don’t know him, which is made obvious by the way they behave. Their “godliness” is defective. Sometimes they have no interest in being good, and figure that’s okay because God’s grace, which they take for granted, has them covered. Sometimes they have plenty of interest in being good—a robustly unhealthy interest, because it’s very angry, legalistic, suppressive, and somehow manages to make exceptions for them in case they ever slip up, but there’s none of this grace for anyone else.

They’ll preach a version of God which actually looks a lot like them, because they’ve imagined him a certain way, and they love that certain way, and never plan to change it. It’s fixed in their thoughts. They won’t change; they figure it’s a sin to change. So they won’t grow. Certainly won’t grow more fruitful and Christlike. They love that imaginary picture of God. Obviously it’s not God.

But if we’re gonna follow Jesus’s most important command, we’re gonna make an effort to get to know the real God, as Jesus describes and defines him. And there are two things about God which Jesus intends to make clear:

THE LORD IS GOD. Humans worship all sorts of things as gods, but Jesus only means his Father. The Hebrews’ God. The monotheists’ God. The God. We mean no one else.

THE LORD IS ONE. God is not the sum of everything in the universe, not the collective consciousness of every being; not even the collective consciousness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The trinity doesn’t get together for lunch every week and vote on what God’s gonna think and do, and sometimes the Holy Spirit and Father outvote the Son. God, the LORD, is One. A single, solitary being who should be the only God we follow and worship and obey.

And love.

Yes, God is an otherworldly being. (Okay, he’s from no world, since he predates and created them.) He’s still a being, not some nebulous, impossible-to-relate-to cloud of something. He’s someone—someone we could love. Someone who loves us back, and loved us first, and is love. He’s really easy to love.

Humans, on the other hand, aren’t so easy to love sometimes. I often joke Jesus’s top two commands are the easiest and hardest. Loving God? No problem. Loving the neighbors? Ugh, the neighbors.

Not everyone I’ve met has agreed with this joke. Mainly because they get along great with their neighbors, and don’t realize by “neighbors” God means everybody in their homeland, including all the people they can’t stand. Whereas God… well they struggle with God. Usually they don’t know God enough to honestly love him, and have some old grievances and hold some old grudges. So while they’d agree Jesus’s top two commands are the easiest and hardest, they’d flip the commands entirely.

Well obviously we gotta sort out our beliefs about God and the neighbors. Then… love.

No command, Jesus states, comes before love. In Matthew he says, “On these two commands hang all the Law and Prophets,” Mt 22.40 by which he meant the scriptures; what we’d call the bible. Follow them, and we’re following God’s will, and likely following all the other commands in the scriptures. Ignore them, and it’s likely we have no relationship with God at all.

But we’re not ignoring them, right? Hope not.