Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
It is not surprising that the Pharisees sent an expert in the Law to question Jesus. What is surprising is the legitimacy of the question. I wonder if, considering Jesus' growing popularity with the common folks, the Pharisees were trying to nail down Jesus' theological (and political) bent. Maybe they wondered if they could recruit Jesus to their cause or at least tag into His popularity. At any rate, the legalists sent a legal expert to ask a legal question: "Which commandment is greatest?" Or "Which law is most important?"
Before I go further, let me clarify what I believe about Jesus Christ because this will help you understand the lens through which I am looking at life and interpreting Scripture. I believe that Jesus is part of the Triune God –the Three-In-One God comprised of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I believe that He was with the Father in eternity, and willingly chose to lay His deity aside as He took on flesh and blood and came to His creation. He left eternity and stepped into time and space and lived among us. I believe He lived a perfect human life and died for our sins, clearing the way for us to have a right relationship with God. I believe Jesus rose again from the dead and returned to God the Father. I’m hoping that we are on the same page with this –this is basic Christianity.
Now, if Jesus came from the Father and returned to the Father and is, in fact, part of the Godhead -if He is, as Scriptures clearly teach, God –then I think it is safe to assume that what Jesus taught, and what He focused on, and what He modeled for us is incredibly important. If anybody in the history of the earth had His priorities straight and understood how things really are, it has to be Jesus. I know that the Old Testament is Scripture. And I know that the writings of Paul and Peter and John and the rest of the New Testament are Scripture. But if God became man and made His dwelling among us and explained to us how things really are, that has to become the lens through which we interpret the rest of Scripture. The actual teachings of Jesus, who was and is God, must be the key to unlocking the rest of Scripture. We can’t do it the other way around. We can’t take the writings of Paul and interpret Jesus. We can’t take the prophets and interpret Jesus. We must use Jesus to interpret everything else –because Jesus is God.
With that in mind, we can see the importance of Jesus' response. God is telling us exactly what His priorities are. Jesus replied, "Love God with all you've got -body, mind and soul; and love others like you love yourself." In other words, Jesus said that the most important thing is love. First, to love God –and then to love one another. This is so important, according to Jesus, that it supersedes the entire law. If we actually learn to love, everything else takes care of itself.
This is clearly the heart of God. This is the bulls-eye of the target. This is what makes Christianity different than any man-made religion. This is it. Jesus taught and modeled love. Authentic Christianity is not religion, it is relationship. The mark of Spiritual maturity is not how much of the Bible we have memorized, it is not how many people we have led in the “sinner’s prayer,” it is not how much spiritual power or anointing we operate in. The only authentic mark of Christian maturity is how much we love God and how much we love others.
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