The Greatest Commandment, Matthew 22:34-40
We now come to a third fascinating challenge from the Pharisees to the Lord Jesus Christ as we come to the end of this period in this week when our Lord goes to the cross. In this question the Pharisees are going to ask Him a trick question. They have been asking trick questions trying to set Him up, trying to entrap Him so that if He answers one way then He is in trouble with one group and if He answers another way He is in trouble with another group.
The question asked here is, which is the greatest of the commandments? We know that it is a test, and it continues this series of questions because of what is said in verse 35. It is so important to understand the context. Part of the trick here is that all commandments from God are equally authoritative. They think they are going to trick Him into taking one over another, and it is very subtle.
The more I am studying in Matthew, which is the most Jewish oriented of the Gospels, the more I understand that we miss a lot of nuances and a lot of the innuendo that is going on here because we are not familiar with Judaism. We are not familiar with what was going on at that time in terms of the theological position of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and so we miss the point that is going on in the text.
Summary outline of vv. 24-40
First of all there is the attack. The parallel passage for this is in Mark 12, a lengthier account that gives us some additional information. Matthew gives and opening introduction telling us that the Pharisees heard that the previous confrontation with the Sadducees, who were their sworn mortal enemies, and for Jesus to turn the tables on the Sadducees made them as happy as they could be. But they still wanted to trap Jesus.
One of the Pharisees comes forward. We are told in Matthew that he was a lawyer, but think in terms of any lawyer that you know. This is not a regular lawyer; this is a man who was an expert in the Law of Moses. He was a scribe, we are also told. He is going to ask the question.
Then we have Jesus' response. He is going to answer them, and once again He sidesteps the trap and will skewer them with the truth. Jesus uses the Word of God over and over again just to directly stab into the heart of the Pharisees and their errors.
First He is going to go to the Law, Deuteronomy 6:4. In Mark it is Deuteronomy 6:4, 5. This is a central passage in Judaism. Then He cites an additional Scripture, which He joins to that. Then He is going to make a final comment, that on these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets. When Jesus says, “The Law and the prophets” he is saying, “Your Scriptures”--all of the Old Testament hangs on these two commandments. Everything is built on this framework of understanding the significance of these two commands.
Then we are told by Mark (not by Matthew) that this scribe who has tried to set Him up, is taken aback. He recovers though, responds and repeats back to Jesus what he has said and says (Mark 12:32), “Teacher, you have spoken the truth”. But he is going to try to use this to again twist things a little bit. Jesus said: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” In other words, if you understand this you have almost got it. Your understanding is very close to grasping the gospel. But in terms of the rest of the Pharisees, Mark tells us, they were shut down and after that no one dared question Him again.
Matthew 22:34 NASB “But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together.” As they had in the past they get together and are conspiring to try to get a way to trap Jesus. The Sadducees had failed and now they are going to come along and try to entrap Him. Their goal is to show that He can't possibly be the Messiah, as He claims to be. It is also to get Him to make some sort of self-indicting statement that would bring Him under the guilt of the Law so that they could condemn Him, because their desire is to completely do away with Him and to have Him killed.
Matthew 22:35 NASB “One of them, a lawyer, asked Him {a question,} testing Him.” When we look at the parallel passage in Mark chapter twelve it says one of the scribes came. This isn't a contradiction. Among the Pharisees as a whole, which was a very conservative religious group among the Jews, there were men who were of different occupations. A scribe was someone whose responsibility was to carefully the text of Scripture, and he was a specialist in the Law.
He is looking to Jesus to make a decision as to which of the 613 commandments in the Mosaic Law was the greatest. Among the Pharisees they not only believed in the 613 commandments, but after the return from the Babylonian captivity they were very careful not to succumb to idolatry again. To make sure that they wouldn't violate any of the commandments they developed a system of additional commandments, which they called a fence. They were such that if you didn't violate those commandments then you surely wouldn't violate core commandment, which was in the Word.
That fence became known as the tradition of the elders. The problem was that they made that as authoritative as the Scripture that came from God.
Deuteronomy 6:4 is a very famous central passage to Judaism. It begins, “Hear O Israel ...” The Hebrew word for “hear” is the word shamah, and it means to listen, pay attention. It has the idea not only of hearing but hearing with a positive obedient response to the command. Mark has the whole quote here.
Mark 12:29 NASB “Jesus answered, 'The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD”. It is usually translated, “the Lord is one” but actually, in the Tanakh, the more recent Jewish Publication Society translation of the Hebrew text into English, they translate it, “the Lord alone”. It is a big difference between the Lord is one and the Lord alone, because if you talk to someone who is Jewish they say one of the problems we have with you Christians is you think Jesus is God. We only have one God because the Shamah says that the Lord is one, and they interpret that as a singular being, a singular monotheist, whereas Christians believe in a Trinitarian or three-person one-essence God.
It has been argued by Christians for centuries that the word echad, translated “one”, does not refer to a singular unitarian being but is one that has a multiplicity with it. In Genesis chapter two when God brings Eve to Adam, Moses writes that “now the two will become one [echad] flesh”. It is a singularity with multiples within it. So in marriage there is one new unit that has come together. It is a unity but there is within that unity more than one person.
Another way to understand echad is that in some contexts it means something alone. If we read the whole context of Deuteronomy chapter six we see that it is preceded by the prohibition of idolatry. They were not to worship the other gods; they were to worship only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As the Tanakh translates it, they understand that contextually they understand that this doesn't mean that the Lord is one but that the Lord alone will be worshipped; you don't worship the other idols. It doesn't say anything about the singularity of God.
Then Jesus says, Mark 12:30 NASB “AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.”
There are four things cited there by the Lord: heart, soul, mind and strength. The first word we'll look at is the word love--“You shall love the Lord your God”. This indicates a certain kind of love. The Greek word AGAPAO draws a distinction between a second word that is used in the Bible, the word PHILEO. This difference is that the word PHILEO has the idea of a more intimate, and maybe a little bit more of emotion oriented love, whereas AGAPE is more of a mental attitude.
It is okay to express emotion when we love God but sometimes, just like in our own family, there are times when your kids are not obedient and you love your kids but you are not feeling very loving. Love is not primarily feeling (which is what the English dictionary claims) and when we look at Scripture love is more of a mental attitude that is grounded in a commitment to a person. It is really grounded in a legal commitment that we refer to sometimes as a contract or a covenant.
When two people get married and they stand before a pastor and
have made vows that they will love the other person in positive and negative
circumstances. It is a contract. Loving the Lord is not a feeling; it is a
mental attitude that comes from an understanding of the Scriptures. To love God
we have to first know God and understand God, and the only way we can know and
understand Him is to know His Word and understand who he is. Then we are able
to love Him because we know that.
When the Scripture says anything to us about the love of God it is usually connected with a measuring device, a metric for figuring out how well we love the Lord. In the New Testament Jesus says in the upper room discourse: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”. It is the same in Deuteronomy. There is the connection between loving God and obeying Him. This is what we see in the emphasis on AGAPAO: “You shall love the Lord your God”.
How much do we have to love God? Then we have these four statements. It is “with all your heart”--the Greek word KARDIA, which is often used not for emotion, but in the Bible it usually refers to the center most part of a person's being and it primarily focuses on their thinking. I think these four words here are roughly used in an overlapping, synonymous way to say, with every ounce of your being, every area of your inner thought life.
All your heart relates to your thinking; all your soul means every area of thought life, self-consciousness, mentality, conscience; all of your mind, which means understanding or intelligence. A relationship with God is not based on emotion; it is based on our thinking. We are to think God's thoughts after Him. Over and over again that is what the Word of God emphasizes. Then the last word: the Greek uses ISCHUS, which means strength or power or might, but what is interesting in the Hebrew text it doesn't use the word “might”. It uses the word me'od, an adjective that means very. Very is a superlative, it is talking about to the uttermost of something. How much do you love someone? You love them very much. How happy are you? You are very happy. You are talking about the extreme. So that became an idiom in the Hebrew for loving something to the fullest extent.
There is a little bit of difference in the way Mark cites what Jesus said and the way Matthew does. Matthew is giving more of an abbreviated account to get to the main point of what Jesus is saying.
Deuteronomy 6:4, 5 NASB “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God; the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
In rabbinical teaching and the teaching of the Pharisees about God, about the spiritual life and about the commandments, what they did was emphasize the Shamah as the primary overriding commandment. They were to recite this every day and many times during the day, and there were very few exceptions.
One exception was that you didn't have to recite the Shamah on your wedding night. The story is, and it is recorded in the Mishnah, that one of the great rabbis, Gamaliel who was Paul's teacher, recited it on his wedding night even though he didn't have to. Quote from the Mishnah: “Did our master not teach us that a bridegroom is exempt from the recitation of the Shamah on the first night of marriage.” He said to them: “I do not wish to suspend myself from accepting the yoke of the kingdom of heaven for one hour”.
Note what he said at the end there: “I do not wish to suspend myself from accepting the yoke of the kingdom of heaven for one hour”. In Judaism, as they were breaking down the Mosaic Law, they described it in two ways, two sections. There was the yoke of the kingdom, and that relates to the Shamah. That was required of all children, all women, and all young boys. Then they had a second yoke called the yoke of the commandments. That is all of the 613 commandments plus all the fence commandments. That is a heavy load that was put on every adult male. They required that if they were going to be spiritual they had to keep all of the 613 commandments plus all of the fence commandments. That is what Gamaliel was saying when he spoke of the yoke of the kingdom.
This helps us to understand passages that we have already studied, like Matthew 11:25-30. This is a well-known passage often quoted in reference to salvation but it has a broader application that also relates to the spiritual life.
Matthew 11:28 NASB “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Who were those who were weary and heavy-laden? They were those who were following the Pharisees who had to take on the yoke of the kingdom and the yoke of the law. They were overburdened by all these traditions of men.
Jesus said: “Take my yoke upon you”. His yoke is basically the yoke of the kingdom. It is just the Shamah, because that is repeated again and again in the New Testament, to love the Lord your God. It is not works oriented. Matt 11:29, 30 NASB “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Christianity teaches that we don't do anything to earn or deserve our salvation. We don't have to follow a list of rules, rituals and regulations in order to gain God's favor. God's favor of grace has been freely given to us at the cross. But this has always been a bit of a problem and confusion, even in the early church. In Acts chapter fifteen there was a meeting because there were Jews who were coming in and saying it was great that Jesus died for their sins, but you also have to follow the Law. What were they doing? They were saying you have to take on the yoke of the Law as well as the yoke of the kingdom.
Acts 15:1 NASB Some men came down from Judea and {began} teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” That is the yoke of the Law.
Acts 15:2 NASB “And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them …” Why? Because they are saying no, following the yoke of the Law doesn't save you.
Acts 15:5 NASB But some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed stood up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses.” That is the yoke of the Law.
Acts 15:10 NASB “Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” That is the yoke of the commandments.
Jesus in His answer saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength” is affirming the yoke of the kingdom, because we have to learn to love the Lord our God with every ounce of our being.
Continuing in Mark, the scribe recognizes what Jesus is saying and says, “Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM; AND TO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THE HEART AND WITH ALL THE UNDERSTANDING AND WITH ALL THE STRENGTH, AND TO LOVE ONE’S NEIGHBOR AS HIMSELF, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
He recognizes the principle of 1 Samuel 15:22 where Samuel says the Lord desires more than burnt offerings and sacrifices.
1 Samuel 15:22 NASB Samuel said, “Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, {And} to heed than the fat of rams.”
So what we see here is Jesus affirming the first part of the commandment, the command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. That is the first part. We will look also at the second commandment that He links together.
This is interesting because neither of these commandments is found in the Ten Commandments. They are embedded within the other 603 commandments that are in the Old Testament, and it is a unique linkage. Because what Jesus is saying is that if you love God you are going to love one another. What is John saying in 1 John? In 1 John 4 he says that if you say that you love God and you don't love one another, you are a liar. So there is this intimate connection between our love for God and our love for one another, and they have to reflect each other because the underlying principle, Jesus is saying, is if you really love God then you are not going to have a problem loving one another.