All Your Mind Series

Message

Mark 12:30

All Your Mind

If you have had a chance to listen to the sermons from the past week you will be familiar with the verses which are the focus of our current series.

Mark 12:30-31

30 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” 31 The second is this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these.’

Today our specific focus is to “Love the Lord with all our mind.” This focus brings us back to an issue I briefly spoke about in the first sermon.

In Mark 12:30 Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5.

Deuteronomy 6:5

5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

You can see the difference can’t you. Deuteronomy calls us to love with heart, soul and strength. Mark calls us to love with heart, soul, MIND and strength.

Why the difference?

Firstly this is the Word of God. The Word of God is inspired so there is no reason why New Testament authors

… especially someone like Jesus.

… there is no reason why New Testament authors can’t give a further revelation, or adapt the Old Testament, to the situation at hand.

Such adaptations are not errors … this is how the progressive revelation of Scripture works.

Secondly, Jesus is quoting from the Old Testament, which is in Hebrew, and Mark is written in Greek. Two different languages.

Often a word in one language needs a few words in another language to get the full range of meaning.

Heart Soul Strength in Hebrew.

Heart Soul Mind Strength in Greek.

Jesus is using the extra word in this situation to convey the full meaning of Deuteronomy 6:5.

(

Which word from Deuteronomy is being further expanded?

The Hebrew word ??? - leb = heart.

Previously we have seen that the heart is the vital centre of who we are.

The heart drives you, and takes your focus, and gives you your identity.

The heart forms your worldview and governs your character. It is the essence of who you are.

That is why the command to love God “with all your heart” is first on the list.

That is what we learnt in the first message of this series. But there is also more to it. The difficulty is that we can hear the word “heart” and we think …

… emotion or being emotional.

… following our heart.

… going beyond logic – or not even being logical.

… being true to our heart.

“The heart wants, what the heart wants,” is a common saying.

All these descriptions of the heart are true. But, from a Scripture perspective the “heart” is not just emotion, or lack of logic.

This is where it gets really interesting.

Deuteronomy 6:5 (in Hebrew)

(you will need to get this verse from an online Hebrew Bible)

In the second century BC, in order to help the wider community read the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, which we call the Old Testament, was translated into Greek. That translation is called the Septuagint.

Today we have access to three full manuscripts of the Septuagint, all which date back to the 4th and 5th century AD. These manuscripts are pretty much the same but, sometimes, they use different words.

Deuteronomy 6:5 (LXXa)

(This is the LXX in the Sinaiticus and Alexandrian Codex - available online)

Deuteronomy 6:5 (LXXb)

(This is text of LXX Vaticanus which uses dianoian instead of kardias - the codex is hard to find online but can be found with a bit of a search))

Now let’s compare these to

Mark 12:30

(You need to get the text online ... the point being that Mark 12:30 has both dianoias and kardias).

Why is this significant?

Apart from anything else we are being reminded here of the difficulties of translation. The Septuagint was translated at a time when Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek were active and alive languages.

Many people in first century Judea were able to fluently speak Hebrew and Greek.

Yet, even then, making an exact translation was difficult.

That is why it really helps at times to have a close look at the original language of Bible, and see what is happening in the original language.

But what is also significant here is that the Hebrew word leb – heart could be translated with the Greek word kardia or the Greek word dianoia. Indeed Jesus wasn’t the only one who did this. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus asks a teacher of the law what he thinks is the first commandment.

The teacher of the law replies.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart (kardia) and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind (dianoia).