The Greatest Commandment

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Every night as the sun sets and our children are getting ready for bed, my husband and I pray over them, and our prayer almost always includes some variation of petitioning the Lord to help us love the Lord our God with all of heart, mind, soul, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves. Why? Because the Lord Himself tells us in His Word that these are the two greatest commandments. The Gospel of Matthew (the gospel most concerned with preaching to the nation of Israel) tells us the framework for Jews to understand who God is, the law and prophets, depend on these two commands (Matthew 22:37-40). As we read through scripture, we know with certainty that both the law and prophets are pointing to a greater reality that is to be fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So why is it that contemporary evangelicals are obsessively choosing sides over knowledge or love when the greatest command decisively includes both? The answer most likely lies in our own self-focused history of how we relate to the church. Our stories are almost always colored by a conversion story that includes a tendency towards law or a tendency towards grace, thereby losing the beauty in the nuance that God calls all His children to a greater command than simply love or knowledge.

J.I. Packer’s Knowing God is a phenomenal book for anyone looking for an accessible summary of who God is, but in the first few pages Packer says something that has become a foundation for me as I pursue knowledge of who God is:

before we start to ascend our mountain, [we need] to stop and ask ourselves a very fundamental question-a question, indeed, that we always ought to put to ourselves whenever we embark on any line of study in God’s holy book. The question concerns our own motives and intentions as students. We need to ask ourselves: What is my ultimate aim and object in occupying my mind with these things? What do I intend to do with my knowledge about God, once I have it? For the fact that we have to face is this: If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it is bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited. The very greatness of the subject matter will intoxicate us, and we shall come to think of ourselves as a cut above other Christians because of our interest in it and grasp of it; and we shall look down on those whose theological ideas see to us crude and inadequate and dismiss them as very poor specimens. For, as Paul told the conceited Corinthians, “Knowledge puffs up…The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know” (I Corinthians 8:1-2).

As someone who, when pushed, would admit that I lean towards the knowledge of the Lord, I cling to this quote from J.I. Packer to point me back to the greatest command. It helps me remember Who is my ultimate source of knowledge and why that knowledge matters. The good news of the gospel is that the Creator of Heaven and Earth saw fit to condescend as fully man and fully God, to take on the sins of the world, so that we may know eternal life. He took my sin, and gave me His righteousness. The law and prophets both point to this reality. And it is in my union with Christ that loving the Lord with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength and my neighbor as myself, is even remotely a possibility.

So as we read the synoptic gospels, we see the pharisees approach Jesus Christ and ask, “What is the greatest command?” Jesus responds, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.” Luke 10:27. And as Matthew reminds us that all the law and prophets are pointing to this reality, it is worthy of a pause to ask ourselves, what exactly does this mean?

Well, the verse is rooted in love. The purpose is love. And we know that God is love.

But as Jen Wilkin so frequently and adeptly points out - can the heart love what the mind does not know? And praise God, the greatest command is also perhaps the greatest instruction manual.

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Heart: Our heart is so often the part of our body associated with feelings or affections. As Valentine’s Day approaches, we see hearts lining aisles at grocery stores, taped to store windows, and accessorizing sweaters and earrings - all to commercialize our penchant for putting our emotional affections up for sale. Valentine’s Day is a day to make your affections known to those who have taken up significant emotional real estate in your life. So, think about those people. Or maybe think about those things. Sometimes what takes up emotional real estate in our lives is something other than a fellow human - maybe a sports team, a pet, a hobby, a job, or a possession of some kind. And now imagine a figurative land transfer of that emotional real estate from a person or a thing to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. Would your worship look different if God occupied the same amount of space in your emotional life that your children do? Your spouse? Your favorite sports team?

The first command doesn’t say love the Lord your God with some of your heart. It says all. But you spend day in and day out with your children. You know that if you give your toddler the blueberry smoothie instead of the strawberry that she’ll hand it back to you. You also likely know that your favorite sports team went from underdog to number one seed because they always go for that 4th down. You know that your favorite sports team never does as well in March Madness when they start off the season ranked, so you always breathe a sigh of relief when preseason rankings come out and they are not on it. You know because you have a standing history of being a fan, watching stats, staying up too late to see how the game turns out. You know because you have set your affections on those people and things and you give them significant real estate in your mind.

That emotional occupation is at least the emotional occupation loving the Lord with all of our heart demands. And there was not a single emotional occupation I listed with something we are unfamiliar with. I think anyone would be hard pressed for an example of something we truly love, that we do not know. Which brings us to loving the Lord with our all of our mind.

Mind: The mind is our driving force that determines what we do next. Our mind is seemingly where our identity forms. It is in the occupation of our mind that our outer-being is shaped. Getting to know someone nearly always begins by asking identity questions - an identity determined by our mind. What do you do for a living? Are you married? Do you have kids? Where do you live? What do you do for fun? At the root, these questions are asking - what kind of decisions do you make? Or maybe put a different way, how is your mind occupied?

Recently we went on a family trip to a ski resort. We are not big winter sports people, but my husband and I would both identify ourselves as athletes. On that family trip, I tried downhill skiing for the first time in my life. At first, I was skeptical and pretty clumsy. I had to learn how to have long sticks attached to my feet. Learning to ski demanded a lot of my mind. It required me to study how others were doing it. I had to focus on the way my body responded to being off balance, so that I could regain that balance. I eavesdropped on ski instructors teaching beginners techniques. After a few runs down the bunny hill, my confidence started to build. I felt ready for a green run, though time didn’t allow for it. Give me a basketball and my true identity as an athlete really starts to show. I spent years learning basketball. Not only the fundamentals of the game, but the necessities for teamwork. I memorized plays, learned my teammates strengths and weaknesses, studied opposing teams. My mind was occupied with basketball for the better part of my adolescence.

We probably all have a similar example. We usually like to categorize ourselves as athletes, artists, thespians, musicians, or intellectuals. Basically, what club did you belong to in high school? But deeper than the question of what club did you belong to, is that of, what has occupied your mind? What have you dedicated your time to studying, analyzing, pushing the boundaries, and growing in knowledge of? Those clubs we belonged to in high school, often shape the rest of our lives.

If our identities are shaped by our minds, and our minds are occupied by what we spend time learning, can we memorize scripture the way we memorize basketball plays? Can we find our balance in the redemptive story of God written in His Word the way we can on a ski slope? As we use our minds to build sky scrapers, advance medical technology, educate the next generation, and learn a new sport - can we use our minds to read the Word of God, given as a gift to us by the Author of our Salvation?

Loving the Lord our God with all of our mind looks a lot like giving over to the Lord the mastery we hold with such high esteem for our worldly identities. And if our minds are as occupied with the Lord as they are with family, sports, and careers, maybe when someone asks a probing identity question our first answer is - I am a child of God.

So, if what occupies our mind determines our very existence, let’s talk about loving the Lord with all of our soul.

Soul: Once upon a time, author George MacDonald said, “you don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” If our soul is the very essence of our being, what does it mean to love the Lord your God with all of your soul? As described in scripture, our souls are made by God and while our bodies can be destroyed, our souls cannot be (Matthew 10:28). Our soul is the culmination of the affections of our heart and the identities of our mind, that defines our very existence. Souls are often described as “gentle,” “kind,” “simple,” or, even at times, “tortured,” or worse, questioned as to whether a person has one at all.

The soul gives us life. It’s the life in us that others recognize as unique to us and either attracts or repels others. Our souls differentiate us from the rest of the animal kingdom as image bearers. Scripture describes souls as either lost or saved (Ezekiel 18:4). It is our soul that needs cleansing.

So if our soul is our existence, our existence should point to the one who created us in the first place. Have you ever heard anyone say, “that person exists to ____.” The blank can vary from “exists to play basketball” to “exists to gamble”, or perhaps even worse. But the phrase is used to describe how close a person is to a thing. If you exist to play basketball, that’s probably where the majority of your time is spent.

But, what is man’s chief end according to the Westminster Catechism? To Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. As Christians, our “blanks” should be filled in by glorifying God and enjoying Him. Our Union with Christ becomes real. Our soul is saved and cleansed in eternity because Christ died for us. And in so doing, He gave us His righteousness as He took on our dirty rags. Our soul’s preoccupation with God begins with that reality - our union with Christ.

And while our Union with Christ is not exactly something we can just will into being, our strength is defined by what we exert our will over.

Strength: There was a time when I was in the hospital for a week. I had severe preeclampsia with my first pregnancy, and there was no amount of strength or willpower I could muster to bring my blood pressure down. It was just high and there was nothing I could do to change it. But, as I laid in that hospital bed, it dawned on me that it wasn’t my job to change it. It was my job to humble myself under the Mighty hand of God (1 Peter 5:8).

What does that have to do with strength? Sometimes, maybe more often than we think, loving the Lord with all of our strength looks like humbling ourselves under His mighty hand and exercising some amount of self-control to check our pride at the door. For the strong-willed among us, control over our circumstances is what we desire. And strength is a key characteristic of our identity. But what happens when there’s nothing your strength can do to save you? I learned the hard way, God will humble you.

Since that week in the hospital, my life has largely been characterized by an exercise in loving the Lord with all of my strength; that is allowing my will to die to His will. This shouldn’t be as difficult as it seems to be for me since His will wins every time, and yet it’s a gradual building of that muscle of self-control to give my will over completely to His. Not my will but yours be done, Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:42).

Strength often doesn’t look like a stiff upper lip, a grin and bear it, or a pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Strength often looks like the complete surrendering of a will, through the fruit of self-control that humbles us before our Mighty God.

Loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength is not out of reach. Although being born into sin separates us from God, we all tangibly know what it means to love something with our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And, yet, as a chief sinner among us, I can say we so often don’t. We choose to post one more picture of our children on Instagram for validation that our affection for our kids is good enough, we choose to occupy our mind with one more hobby or skill that displaces the knowledge of God, we choose to give our very being to the identity marker we either hold in such high esteem or can’t get out from under, and we so often cling to our strength as an allusion of control. And when it all comes tumbling down, displacing all of those worldly idols with loving the Lord our God with ALL of our heart, mind, soul, and strength is all that really matters.

For more on loving our neighbor, see the next edition of Sarah’s Soapbox.