Jesus hadn’t even hesitated a moment to answer. And of course the Pharisees had to have known this verse, for they prided themselves on observing the Law. Jesus was quoting from the Shema; a prayer that was prayed each day in the morning and evening by all, and by doing so, Jesus now left them exposed and vulnerable!
The Pharisees over the centuries had lost sight of the very "heart of the matter"! They had become so in love with following the exact letter of the Law, they forgot the Lawgiver! They actually forgot what loving God looked like! And without love for God, the external observance of the Law became an empty form of religion.
Jesus goes on to warn them specifically of this danger in the following chapter: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean” (Matthew 23:25-26). It's a matter of the heart!!
What did Jesus say exactly? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). Heart and soul and mind are not three distinct pieces of us, but together they make up our entire being, for they all point to who we really are. So let me ask you the same questions the iWorship Bible asked us this morning,
- The heart is our emotions, our feelings of joy and gladness, and also despair and sadness: Is your affection for the Lord genuine? Wholehearted? Halfhearted? Or an even smaller fraction of what they once were?
- The soul is our activities- eating, sleeping, working and family life: Is your soul sold out for God throughout your day? Do you truly trust Him for eternal life?
- The mind is quite simply our intellectual activities- thinking and learning (centering our thoughts around Him): Are your thoughts subject to the omniscient One? Do you thirst for His truth and for Him who is our source of knowledge?
Jesus tells us that “[to love God] is the first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:38). It is first and greatest in that it represents the heart-beat of all the commandments. Everything we do should derive from a heart of love. Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). He doesn’t want our obedience coming from a sense of obligation or anything else, but purely from a heart that is wholly in love with Him!
Really loving God means honoring Him, revering Him, and paying close attention to all He desires in His Word out of a desire to please Him.
BUT He didn’t stop there!
He went on to add something more to the greatest Commandment: “The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself'” (Matthew 22:39). John in the book of First John explained it this way: “We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:19-21).
Therefore, loving God empowers us to love others. They go hand and hand!
When you read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) last week, did you feel as though you were falling short? Did you wonder how you could fulfill all Christ Jesus was commanding us to do in those chapters? You and I can’t ever measure up. There is no way we could possibly fulfill all of that consistently on our own! But there is One who can!
Jesus confided in His disciples just before He was arrested that He was going to send us a Helper:
“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” – John 14:15-21
Jesus loved us perfectly and gave Himself for us (Galatians 2:20). He came and saved us when we were helpless to save ourselves (Romans 5:6-10). And now, when we set our hearts to love and follow Him, we are not only united to Him, but transformed so that we can imitate His love towards others, and “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
Through Jesus we not only receive the understanding of God’s will, but the power and desire to follow Him and love our neighbors.
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**What exactly does it look like to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind"? This past week I asked the Lord for a verse, or passage of Scripture that best demonstrated to us exactly what it means, and how it's suppose to look to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind! I was surprised by His answer, for it was a passage I was familiar with, but had never connected the two before!! It's too much to adequately describe it for you here, so I'm sharing it through a video on Women in the Word Facebook page. I hope you'll join me there today to learn exactly what it means to love Him in such a way!**