HOPE! - How do you Love God?

In Matthew’s Gospel

The Pharisees and Sadducees go back and forth to Jesus with leading questions about taxes and marriage in order to trap him in his words, but Jesus doesn’t fall for any of their traps. 

Finally, the Pharisees come back with a question: Which is the greatest commandment in the Law? 

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.” 

In Mark’s Gospel

While Jesus was debating with the Sadducees a scribe was impressed and asked Jesus a question: What is the most important commandment?

Jesus recites the Shema in response, saying, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

He then adds that the second is to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

The scribe strongly agrees with Jesus on this, and Jesus tells him that he is not far from the Kingdom of God.

In Deuteronomy

The “Shema” contains one of the daily prayers of the Jews.

"Sh'ma Yisra'el. YHWH Eloheinu. YHWH Ehad."

“Shema” means “Hear!” or “Listen!”

“Hear, O Israel! The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

Or “Hear, O Israel! The LORD [is] our God, the LORD alone.”
Or “Hear, O Israel! The LORD our God [is] the LORD alone.”

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”

In the New Testament, Jesus said that this commandment was the greatest commandment of them all.

If you keep this one law, you are keeping all of God’s laws.

If you break this one law, you are breaking all of God’s laws.

Even if you keep all the other laws perfectly, but you don’t love God and you don’t love your neighbor, then it doesn’t matter what other laws you keep.

The Pharisees were more concerned with not working on the Sabbath and not having poor hygiene than they were about loving their neighbor. If they saw someone in need on the Sabbath, they would ignore them because that might require effort of some kind. If they saw someone who was sick or injured, they would ignore them, because what if that person’s sickness or blood might make them “ceremonially unclean”? They thought, “I can’t worship God if I get my hands dirty by helping others.”

But they were dead wrong.

The two greatest commands are intertwined. You can’t have one without the other. How do you show your love to God? By loving your neighbor!