Subtitle: "There is no commandment greater than these."…. What is He trying to tell us?
Excerpt: "There is no commandment greater than these."…. What is He trying to tell us?
Consider the following verses that God calls out as the greatest and second greatest commandments.
Mark 12:30-31 – And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.
The Lord offers two levels of order and priority in these two verses.
Greatest and Second Greatest Commandments
We are called to first and foremost love the Lord. That involves a myriad of details, expanded on throughout Scripture. In most cases, to love the Lord fits perfectly alongside of the second greatest commandment, to love our neighbor. However, there are times in the life of a Biblical Christian where one has to walk a fine line between loving the sinner but still calling out the sin. It always involves hypocrisy since all Christians continue to fight (and often lose) in the battle with our sin nature. However, when confronted with what we believe is a command of God (Right-to-Life, for example) that risks the perception of a lack of love for our neighbor (whose opinion differs), we have to make a judgment call on how to respond. The greatest challenge between this first command to love the Lord and the secondary command to love our neighbor has to do with salvation. Where do we draw the line between building a relationship with the lost (neighbor) and the risk of angering our friends, coworkers, neighbors, and family by sharing the narrow path of the Gospel message? We live in a gray world and if we never get past lifestyle evangelism, are we really showing we love God by ignoring the fact that we are His ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20)?
The Order in Loving the Lord
In addition to the more obvious order of (1) love the Lord and (2) love your neighbor, is a more subtle, but equally important, order of how to love the Lord. Note in Mark 12:30, above, that Biblical Christians are to show our love for God through our heart, then soul, then mind, and finally strength. I would suggest that this order is not a coincidence.
Love God with your Heart
To love God begins with salvation, where we accept Him based on the grace He has shown us, exclusively through the sacrifice of His Son for our sins. When we accept Christ as our Savior and Lord, we are acknowledging both the sacrifice and our willingness to follow Him, not out of any obligation, but out of love. That is a heart-change that is reinforced by one of the most well-known and repeated verses in Scripture …
Romans 10:9 – If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Salvation does not begin with our “mind,” as a theological construct, since even the demons believe who Christ is but are surely not saved (James 2:19). The born-again Christian (such as myself) may have been attracted to God through apologetics (logic), but salvation is a heart-change first and foremost.
Love God with your Soul
Back to Mark 12:30 again… “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
Often the soul is described as the “essence of humanity’s being” (details here). It is who we are and is often both confused and combined with the concept of man’s spirit. Regardless of these potential distinctions between soul and spirit, when we have a heart -change toward the Lord and become born-again believers, that impacts who we are, both inside and outside. James makes the point that faith without deeds is dead (James 2:26) as evidence that when our heart changes, so does our soul or our “essence.”
Love God with your Mind
The third step in loving God is with our mind. Again, it is critical to note that salvation is not a change in our opinion or logic or thoughts. Those changes are outcomes from salvation as a heart-change. Along with our behavior (soul), so our thoughts (mind) begin to draw closer and closer to the “mind of God” (Colossians 3:2) as we grow in sanctification.
Love God with your Strength
Finally, as we love the Lord with our heart, soul, and mind, we are called to devote our lives to His service by loving Him with all our strength.
Conclusion
Just two among over 31,000 verses in Scripture, God’s love letter to mankind. How much more clarity will we have as Biblical Christians on the other side of the grave to see the poetry of this amazing tapestry of interwoven theology?
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words