The Greatest Commandment

Which is the greatest armed service? Everybody has an argument ready-made for their favorite. However, no one service can do everything when the nation calls. Furthermore, all are reliant on at least one other; no one service can stand alone. The Army needed air support from the Air Force like in the Battle of the Bulge and the heavy lift capacity of the Navy to move their heavy divisions as in the case of Desert Shield, where VII Corps had to be moved from Europe to the Saudi Arabia. The Air Force needed the security of the Army to protect their airfields from ground assault such as the Pusan perimeter in Korea. The Marines need the Navy for amphibious support and initial air support from the carriers until they could establish bases like on Guadalcanal. The Navy needs the Marine Corps to secure their ports like at Guantanamo or protect their capital ships from enemy boarding parties. The Coast Guard secures our coasts so the Navy is freed up to take on the open ocean. All of the services are intertwined and rely on each other, in essence making the whole DOD greater than the sum of its parts.

Similarly, which directive of God is the greatest? All of God’s commandments are pure and holy of themselves and can be called the greatest of the commandments. You can have endless debates about which one is greater - Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, or which one is least - thou shalt not bear false witness, worship idols, thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy.

Lucky for us the question has already been answered by Jesus in Matt 22:34-40 -

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 22

34When the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. 35 And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test Him: 36 “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and most important command. 39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

The ‘first’ greatest commandment is a restatement of verses out of the Old Testament, Deut 6:4-5. Looking further into Deuteronomy, you see the following:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This passage forms one of the more orthodox Jewish core beliefs called the Shema. This is ritualized by what is known as the phylacteries, where the verses are written on small pieces of paper and put into a small box that is wrapped around the head and recited. Also required is that Jewish homes have a small box or pocket nailed inside the front door of the home with the verses inside.

The ‘second’ commandment is also from the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus, 19:18:

English Standard Version Chapter 19

18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

What you have here is a composite of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments were split into two ‘tables’, most commonly where #1-4 were God-related, and #5-10 were human-related. The God-related commandments didn’t necessarily have precedence over the human-related, but as Jesus related here, loving God was the supreme priority and only by loving God could we love each other and thus fulfill the commandments in the human-related second table.

In obeying the ‘first’ commandment you are loving God singularly and solely (the 1st Commandment) and in so doing are refusing to worship other gods (2nd commandment) as well as showing the proper respect for God by not speaking against God’s greatness or holiness (3rd commandment), and by obeying his ordinances (4th commandment). Why is this passage considered the Greatest Commandment?

What does it mean when we say to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind? In context and usage, it means to follow God in every aspect of our lives through obedience, piety, and faithfulness to God’s word and commands. This also means total submission to the will of God with intense loyalty and totality of being, refusing any and all other gods while worshipping God regularly with total commitment. Being the broken, sinful people that we are, I would think this is the toughest commandment to follow as well. We have so many distractions, temptations, and idols that it is no wonder that only the perfect Jesus would be capable of pulling that off. We all fail every day to obey this commandment, but the good news is that God knows this and loves us anyway. We can maximize our efforts by keeping in mind our weaknesses, identifying and avoiding temptation, and acknowledging that it is all about God.

The ‘second’ greatest commandment is ‘love your neighbor as yourself’. This reflects the second table of the Commandments pointing to loving and honoring others, starting with our parents (5th commandment), not murdering others (6th commandment), not cheating on our spouses (7th commandment), not stealing their possessions (8th commandment), not lying against them (9th commandment) and not to envy or be jealous that they are doing better than us or have better things than us (10th commandment). But why should we have to do this? Do we figure that since God loves everyone, he can love your neighbor by himself so we don’t have to? We are all evil, depraved, and selfish, so why love someone like that? The answer to this question can be seen in Gen 1:27 -

27 So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female.

By loving your neighbor, you are loving the representation of God, in essence loving God directly. Who should we love and honor more than the one who created us and everything in the universe? The world is a creation of God and was given to us by God for our benefit and happiness. Why would God not want you to be happy with his gifts? God also gave us the ability to understand and collect knowledge so we can build the things we like. Who doesn’t like their possessions? (Ask for examples of things they love and apply to this illustration) You can also see that in loving your neighbor, you would be loving a creation of God, and that is one of many ways you can worship God. One also shows how well they love God by the way he respects God’s desires, in this case by loving our neighbor. Jesus also addressed this same thought in Matt 25:35-40.

35 For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you took care of Me; I was in prison and you visited Me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or without clothes and clothe You? 39 When did we see You sick, or in prison, and visit You?’ 40 “And the King will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’

Continuing with the ‘second’ greatest commandment, the question jumps out, ‘So who is your neighbor?’ Since the Bible wasn’t originally written in English, we can look at the original language of Common Greek. In the original text, the word used is ‘plesion’. This term of neighbor is more widespread than in English. It isn’t about just the person living near you, it can also mean ‘other’, ‘another’, or ‘fellow citizen.’ So, the intent was anyone that you came across. To illustrate this point, look at Luke Luke 10:29–37 -

29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus took up the question and said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion. 34 He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him. When I come back I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.’ 36 “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37 “The one who showed mercy to him,” he said. Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same.”

Jesus is here to tell us that we need to love each other and this is hammered home in 1 John 4:10 -

10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

So, our job is to love one another but that goes deeper than thinking kindly of someone. We show our love when we help one another, care for one another and support one another. Do we do this completely in real life? Nope. We are selfish, sinful, and inherently selfish because when Adam and Eve fell from the Garden in sin, it loosed sin on the world and we have been corrupted. Since then we are incapable of loving all our neighbors as God loves all of us. For example, who loves the person that cuts us off in traffic? Who loves the person that empties the coffee pot and doesn’t make a new pot? Who loves the person taking our order at Taco Bell and then screws it up? Who loves the boy that seems to go out of their way to make our daughter mad? We can’t. Our sinful nature will not cooperate with our critical sense of having to love everyone as God loves everyone. Especially to the extent that God loves everyone, as noted in John 3:16. God knows this and because of our depraved selves He opened the door for the redemption that comes through Jesus’ sacrifice.

So, because God loves us, we have the ability to love each other and we should do so, because they are made in God’s image and because God tells us so. Sure, it is hard. We are not without sin, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore God’s desire for us to love one another. We can start by forgiving those who have wronged us. The person who cut us off may be in a rush because their wife went into labor. The person who didn’t refill the coffee pot may be dwelling on the recent death of a loved one. The one who screws up our order may have just had a previous customer berate them for something the person had no control over. The boy who torments our daughter may secretly like her, but can’t figure out how to show this and win her over. God wants us to forgive as well as love and through that forgiveness we can mirror that love. We have done much worse to God and he forgave us through Christ Jesus. Who here thinks they are in a better place to figure this out than God? Look at 1 John 4:7 - 12.

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 4

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.