The Commandments

So once again in today’s Gospel we hear a challenge, this time from an expert in the law, who asks what commandment is the greatest. Jesus responds by summarizing the 10 commandments, with just two: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and body. And the second is like it: you shall love your neighbour as yourself. In these Commandments we have before us every single thing that the law and the prophets were about and driving us to live in accordance with. 

Jesus answers verbally with truth drawn from the Scriptures that these Pharisees and Sadducees would know exceptionally well: the 10 commandments. But notice that he doesn’t actually quote the 10 commandments literally, which begin with the Israelites’ duties to the Lord: “I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make an idol for yourself or bow down and serve them. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, and the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work.” These are followed by commandments that are about ordering the Israelites’ lives together: obeying parents, not murdering, not stealing, not committing adultery, not bearing false witness, not coveting. So the question is why doesn’t he simply quote the 10 commandments back to the law expert here? 

If we look at some of Jesus’s other encounters with the Jewish leaders we can answer this question. Think about the time Jesus queries the Jewish leaders when the latter ask why his disciples are picking grain on the Sabbath. The leaders think themselves quite righteous and will use their standing as a pretext to call Jesus out for his failure to follow the Commandment about not working on the Sabbath. This, they think, will give them leverage to have Jesus thrown out of Synagogues, arrested, maybe even justifying violence against him.

But of course the point Jesus makes is that the Sabbath is intended to give people rest because they need it so they can physically and mentally function well, worship, be restored and refreshed, so they can work again. To pick grain for eating, or as he quotes from the OT, to get water for animals, is not a violation of the commandment because doing these things is necessary for rest to actually occur! Picking grain on the Sabbath is a mercy granted to finite, needy individuals, not an action intended to subvert God’s will for rest!  

So Jesus does not simply quote the first commandment back to the law expert because it seems that the Jewish leaders have missed something critical and have ironically turned the commandments into idols that allow them to proclaim their own righteousness and potentially gain power and influence in their own communities. Instead he summarizes the commandments in a way that points to a deeper truth than what the Jewish leaders had grasped: that to love God with your whole self, you must love your neighbour because the whole point of God’s gifting you with life and talents is so that you might multiply them i.e. draw or point others to God.

So to love God with your whole self, you must consider how your actions affect your neighbour, i.e. those also made in the image of God. You must think of how you apply your Scriptures, your laws, your words, your actions, your practices: are these intended for your own righteousness, your own power, or are they intended to help others see God’s mercy, power, and providence over all things? This is precisely the mission given to Abraham, all the subsequent prophets, and enshrined in the law.  

But the heart of what Jesus is driving at here in deepening these commandments for the Pharisees is the recognition that our schemes, our reasoning, our capacity, is always going to be flawed. The implication is that fulfilling God’s commandments is actually about our submission, our faith and trust even through doubt, the desire for certainty, and our need to feel righteous, secure, and right.

To know the letter of the law is not sufficient; our capacities are limited. To follow the law fulfilled in Christ is to let go and go along, go up with Christ, allowing yourself to be changed, your heart transformed, converted over and over through times of doubt, longing, and confusion; it is about giving your whole self to God and so being joined to the one who loved God perfectly by going to the Cross for his neighbour, including all enemies. For in this one lone act, Jesus fulfills God’s commandments and completes God’s will: that all humanity might be reconciled to him.

So the apostle Paul challenges us to submit, to lay down our lives and take up our Crosses: “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” To love God, is to love neighbour all the way to our respective crosses, on these two commandments hangs the will of God. AMEN