"Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Matthew 22:36-40
These verses are interesting. Even though someone was trying to catch him in a contradiction, Christ decided to answer the question clearly... because it is a good question. :) What is the most important commandment of all of them? And of all the things that God has asked us to do, he narrowed it down for us. The absolutely most important thing is to love God, with everything that we are. Perhaps emotions, spirit and body, and thoughts. All of those should be dedicated to loving God. What does that mean for us? I think perhaps that love isn't just an emotion... love is active, and involves all of you. When we love someone, especially God, we have to dedicate emotion, spirit, action, and thought to the relationship. We can't just say a quick prayer at the beginning of the day and then forget God. Think of what it is like to love. Not just romantic love, but family love and friendship love too. You want to spend time with the person. You want to talk, you wander through the store and see something they would like because they are not far from your thoughts. You take actions to make those things happen. You often feel a spiritual bond with them, and always an emotional one. How would our lives be changed... how would even one day be changed, if we felt like that, actively, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally devoted to God? I think our whole lives would be changed... overwhelmingly for the better.
And the second is like unto it. ... Sometimes we think that other people can be dismissed if they aren't in our families or they aren't within our established circles in some way. It's okay to dislike the person we're yelling at on the phone, right? Or the person who smells bad, or the person who snores in church? How about that person at work who doesn't do half as much as we do? Or maybe the lady at the supermarket that is so massively disorganized that she is holding up the line for everyone? We all have people that we dislike or snub, or can't understand or get frustrated with... and Christ tells us that in addition to loving God with all that we are, the second most important thing after that is to love other people as we love ourselves. And, just like we imagined love before, let's imagine it about ourselves. Do we give up on ourselves, or do we give ourselves another chance? Do we feel that we still have worth even when we make horrible mistakes? Do we feel that we deserve love even when we sin? Do we feel like we're pretty cool, even though we get frustrated with ourselves sometimes? Are we awesome and fun people that other people should get to know? ... Yeah, we are. :)
Today, let's work on these most important of all things... loving God, and loving everyone else. Let's work on our capacity and ability to love... to love God, to love others, and to love ourselves. It makes all the difference.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Matthew 22:36-40
These verses are interesting. Even though someone was trying to catch him in a contradiction, Christ decided to answer the question clearly... because it is a good question. :) What is the most important commandment of all of them? And of all the things that God has asked us to do, he narrowed it down for us. The absolutely most important thing is to love God, with everything that we are. Perhaps emotions, spirit and body, and thoughts. All of those should be dedicated to loving God. What does that mean for us? I think perhaps that love isn't just an emotion... love is active, and involves all of you. When we love someone, especially God, we have to dedicate emotion, spirit, action, and thought to the relationship. We can't just say a quick prayer at the beginning of the day and then forget God. Think of what it is like to love. Not just romantic love, but family love and friendship love too. You want to spend time with the person. You want to talk, you wander through the store and see something they would like because they are not far from your thoughts. You take actions to make those things happen. You often feel a spiritual bond with them, and always an emotional one. How would our lives be changed... how would even one day be changed, if we felt like that, actively, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally devoted to God? I think our whole lives would be changed... overwhelmingly for the better.
And the second is like unto it. ... Sometimes we think that other people can be dismissed if they aren't in our families or they aren't within our established circles in some way. It's okay to dislike the person we're yelling at on the phone, right? Or the person who smells bad, or the person who snores in church? How about that person at work who doesn't do half as much as we do? Or maybe the lady at the supermarket that is so massively disorganized that she is holding up the line for everyone? We all have people that we dislike or snub, or can't understand or get frustrated with... and Christ tells us that in addition to loving God with all that we are, the second most important thing after that is to love other people as we love ourselves. And, just like we imagined love before, let's imagine it about ourselves. Do we give up on ourselves, or do we give ourselves another chance? Do we feel that we still have worth even when we make horrible mistakes? Do we feel that we deserve love even when we sin? Do we feel like we're pretty cool, even though we get frustrated with ourselves sometimes? Are we awesome and fun people that other people should get to know? ... Yeah, we are. :)
Today, let's work on these most important of all things... loving God, and loving everyone else. Let's work on our capacity and ability to love... to love God, to love others, and to love ourselves. It makes all the difference.
Good
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. I especially appreciate your point about going through the store and thinking of buying things for friends we want to please. Imagine our days were we to go everywhere thinking of how we could please God.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that would be life-changing, I think. :)
Deletehi
DeleteHi. Thanks for visiting. :)
DeleteAll I can say is Amen!!
ReplyDeletevery nice and good explanation
ReplyDeletegreatly interesting. am highly attracted to learn even more about the scripture and the love mentioned. God bless be the us all.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind comments. :)
ReplyDeletevery good devotional. God bless you 🙏🏾❤
ReplyDeletewow so coollllllllllll Im glad I found this thanks.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this💙😇
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading. :)
DeleteThank you for your insight. I would like to ask you about a question that has bothered me for decades which relates to Mathew 22:39 "Love thy neighbor as yourself..." What if one does not love oneself? For whatever reason we do not know how to love ourselves or never experienced unconditional love (until we met Jesus), then how can we love our neighbour as we love ourself when we do not love ourselves?
ReplyDeleteHi Heather. :) That's a good question. I think part of it is in the other scripture that says "all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (3 Nephi 14:12) which is somewhat asking the same thing, but from a little bit different perspective, and part of it is in the scripture where God asks us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). We don't always love ourselves, or treat ourselves the way that we should, but even if we are our own enemies, God wants us to love ourselves, and to love others as well. Taking it even further, God wants us to learn to be happy... in this life, not to wait for the next. In Mormon 9:14, he tells us that at the judgement day "he that is happy shall be happy still," which I think means that we need to jump in and figure ourselves out a little, and get whatever help we need to be able to find that happiness and peace with ourselves somewhere. Sometimes that takes repentance, sometimes it takes counseling, and sometimes it just takes a lot of prayer and asking God to help us learn how to see ourselves as he does, because he knows we are all good and worthy of love down deep, even if we've dug deep holes for ourselves and no one else, including ourselves, can see it.
DeleteI would like to offer an idea that struck me when trying to contemplate what Jesus was attempting to teach us with His stunning, IMO, response to this question about which is the greatest of all the commandments. What struck me was the brilliance of adding "And the second is like unto the first. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." When I think about the significance of mentioning a second, particularly since nobody asked Him a question about the second greatest commandment, my mind sounds an alarm to warn me to really pay attention because Jesus is bringing more illumination than the lawyer asked for. This passage, to me, is the most significant one in the entire Bible as it seems to be the ultimate "Keep it simple stupid" answer of all time. If Jesus was, in fact, God manifested on earth to bring humankind a truly revolutionary contract or "New Testament" this WAS the "To be or not to be" answer.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that in Hebrew, the phrase "like unto" does not mean "just like", "sort of like", "similar too", or "almost the same as", but rather means "Exactly the same as." As mentioned by the first poster, Jesus is boiling His offer down right here and right now. She rightly identifies the word "love" in the only way possible. It's a verb. I believe Jesus is telling the so called expert the following.
The greatest Commandment is to love Me, heart, mind, and soul and the second IS the first because if you want to do the First you must do the second. They are the same. Do this one thing and all the commandments established before, under the Old Covenant are already met. If you love your neighbor as yourself, could you ever murder them, steal from them, bear false witness against them, , covet their wife, or husband, or commit adultery?
Not if you truly were obeying the first. What a revolutionary notion. How could anyone ever ask a followup question after hearing such an astonishingly simple answer. I believe if humankind can honor this ONE command we shall, as Jesus puts it, really be "close to the Kingdom of Heaven."
Thanks for your excellent insight.
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