What Is the Great Commandment — In Biblical Context

The Biblical Context

The Great Commandment is the cornerstone of biblical ethics, the summary of the entire law, and the standard by which every other commandment is measured. When a lawyer asked Jesus, 'Which is the great commandment in the law?' he was testing Him, for Jewish tradition had identified 613 commandments, and debates raged about their relative importance. Jesus answered by combining two passages from the Torah — Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 — into a single revolutionary statement. '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.' This was not an innovation but a profound insight into the structure of Scripture. The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) was already the central confession of Judaism, recited twice daily. 'Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.' Jesus added 'mind' to the traditional triad, emphasizing intellectual devotion as well as emotional and volitional commitment. The command to love God 'with all thy heart' means with the center of one's being — desires, affections, and will. 'With all thy soul' means with the whole of life and vitality. 'With all thy mind' means with the intellect, understanding, and reasoning. Nothing is to be withheld; no compartment of life is exempt from devotion to God. The second commandment — 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself' — is 'like unto' the first not merely in importance but in nature. Love for neighbor flows from love for God, and love for God necessarily produces love for neighbor. This is why John wrote, 'If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.' Jesus made this command even more radical in the Sermon on the Mount, extending 'neighbor' to include enemies: 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you.' Paul recognized that this commandment summarized the entire moral law. 'Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.' In Romans 13, he listed the commandments and concluded that they are all 'briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' The Great Commandment sets an impossibly high standard — no human being has loved God or neighbor perfectly. This drives us to the gospel, for only in Christ can we be forgiven for our failure and empowered by the Spirit to begin loving as we should.

Where It Sits in Scripture

Supporting Passages