‘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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31 NIV
What is the greatest commandment in the Law? This was apparently a favorite game among the theologians of Jesus’ day. And so one of them tested Jesus with this question. I suspect he was trying to see how well Jesus actually knew the Law. Jesus responded by providing the top two commandments. To love God with all that you are (Deut. 6:4-5), and to love those around you as you love yourself (Lev. 19:18). These are the two greatest commandments. It makes me wonder why the Ten Commandments are what people want to put up in public places. Why not these that encompass the other ten, instead?
To love God with all of my heart, with all of my soul, with all of my mind, and with all of my strength. If I do that, there will be no part of me that does not love God? And that is what he wants. God does not want to share me with anyone or anything else; he wants all of me. That is what he created me for.
But in loving God with all that I am, I find that I am still able to love others around me. Not because I am so filled with love myself. But because his love will flow out of me to those I encounter. On my own, I am not very loving. But when I am fully loving God, his love enables me to love, not only those who are easy to love but also the hard-to-love ones around me.
