In a Nutshell: the Great Commandment

We humans like to simplify things—translate the complex into simple, understandable terms—reduce what is too big to grasp into small, more manageable bites—boil things down “into a nutshell” so it is more easily managed. That’s what an unnamed Pharisee was doing when he asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Matthew 22:36). Of all the laws in the Hebrew scriptures, which one takes priority. Boil the 613 laws down to one. What is the essence of the Law in a nutshell?

Jesus responded by quoting the Shema—Deuteronomy 6:5—and Leviticus 19:18. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37, 39).

Therein is the essence of the Law—what it means to live a life that is pleasing to God—in a nutshell: love. Love in three-part harmony: love God; love neighbor; love self.

Of course, we humans are seldom content with nutshell answers. We have questions about the answer.

What does it mean to love the LORD our God with heart, mind, soul, and strength (Luke 10:27)—that is, with all that we are, with the totality of our being?

To love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength is to be captivated by the beauty of God’s character and the wisdom of God’s ways. It is to love God with an all-consuming love—a love that governs our thinking, that directs what we do, that shapes who we are and how we live. That’s what Jesus meant when he taught us to pray, “hallowed be your name” (Luke 11:2). We pray that we might love God with a love that is greater than any other love, including the love of our own selves.

Jesus’s identification of love as the essence of the Law comes with built-in challenges that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to do—at least in our own strength.

The first challenge is most of us do not know the God Jesus revealed. Our understanding of God is limited, at best—patterned after the ways we humans naturally think. We can never truly love the God we have created in our own image.

To love God with an all-consuming, captivating love requires us to know who Jesus revealed God to be: a God of steadfast, faithful love (Exodus 34:6)—a love that never waivers, a love that never gives up on us or abandons us; a God of self-giving, servant love who seeks our good (1 John 4:8); a God whose love is unconditional because it is rooted in God’s character rather in response to who we are or what we do. It requires us to grasp on a deep level that God relates to us out of grace, dealing with our failures, rebellion, and sins with forgiveness. As the psalmist said, “[The LORD] does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103:10). As long as we remain stuck in our merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking, we will never be able to truly love God.

The second challenge lies in the condition of our hearts. We live out of a self-serving, me-centered, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit. This me-centered spirit is the essence of Sin—Sin with a capital S as opposed to sins (plural). Sin with a capital S is the disease that ravages our spirit; sins (plural) are the symptoms that reflect the presence of the disease. This self-life, expressed in our ego-centric selves and our comparing and competing orientation, blocks our ability to authentically love God. By the way, this comparing and competing orientation is why we focus on sins (plural), judging and condemning the sins of others.

The good news is God—living out of God’s steadfast, faithful love—does not give up on us in spite of our deeply rooted self-life (our Sin and sins). God—living out of grace—freely forgives us our Sin and our sins, accepting us as we are, claiming us as beloved children. God—living out of God’s self-giving, servant love—acts on our behalf, giving the Son to break the power of Sin and death on our lives, giving the Spirit to set us free from the power of Sin in our lives.

The good news is that God—through the Spirit—is at work to create within us the ability to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. The Spirit is nurturing within us a love for God that is greater than the love of our own ego-centric selves—a captivating love for God that frees us from our me-centered, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit—an all-consuming love that governs how we think, directs what we do, and shapes who we are and how we live.

The ability to love God in such a way begins by acknowledging that we don’t love God with such a love—but we want to.

Which brings us to the next question—what will it look like when we love the LORD our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength? Jesus gave us the answer to this question. The way we love God is by loving our neighbor as ourself. Loving our neighbor will be the topic of the next blog.