1. The Greatest Commandment
February 14, 2010
The Greatest Commandment
Corrie Ten Boom and her family secretly housed Jews in their home during WW II. Their "illegal" activity was discovered, and Corrie and her sister Bessie were sent to the German death camp, Ravensbruck. There Corrie would watch many, including her sister, die. After the war she returned to Germany to share her testimony and the grace of God. She had been traveling around a defeated Germany speaking about forgiveness. She spoke on how when God forgives our sins He casts them into the deepest ocean and they are gone forever, and then God puts up a sign that says “No fishing allowed”. At one of her speeches she saw a man in the crowd she recognized. She saw this man who brought back all the horrors of her captivity in prison. She remembered her sister who had died there as she looked at this man walking towards her after she had spoken. He was one of the guards. In fact he was one of the most cruel guards. He walked up to her and put his hand out: “A fine message, Fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!" Corrie Ten Boom wrote in her story how reluctant she had been to take his hand. She didn’t expect that he would remember her but she certainly remembered him. She said “I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze."You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying. "I was a guard there. But since that time," he went on, "I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein," again the hand came out "will you forgive me?" She said she thought of her sister who had died and all the terrible things that had been done and she wondered how it could be erased so simply. She wrote that it was the most difficult thing she had to do but she fought through the anger in her heart and forced herself to try and offer forgiveness. So she raised her hand woodenly and she wrote: And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. "I forgive you, brother!" I cried. "With all my heart!" For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then.
Mt 22:34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. Mt 22:35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: Mt 22:36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Mt 22:37 Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Mt 22:38 This is the first and greatest commandment. Mt 22:39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Mt 22:40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Luke adds also with all your strength. So tell me. If you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength what’s left? What is it that doesn’t fit into one of those categories? What Jesus is telling us is that we need to love God with all that we are. Love God with everything that we have. When we do this and then we love our neighbor as ourselves we are actually fulfilling the entire law. The entire Old Testament and its 613 laws can be summed up in a single command. That should tell you something: it is an important command to keep. I wonder how we are doing.
When we read this passage we read it differently than Jesus audience would have heard it. As part of the scientific age we have separated all the parts of the body to their specific functions. The Heart beats pumps blood to the body, the mind which we associate with the brain is the operation center that controls the body and allows us to think and understand. Thus we distinguish greatly between the two both in their literal functions in our body and the symbolic way in which they are used. For us the mind and the heart serve two very different functions. We even recognize that of the two the brain is more important. After all if your heart dies there is a chance it can be resuscitated but if your brain dies you die. The mind is the composition of our knowledge, it controls our thoughts, and is the primary factor in our decision making. Conversely the heart is not where we do our thinking but where our feelings come from. There are times in which we would associate understanding with the heart as going beyond just head knowledge but something that we know deep down in the core of our being. Basically the mind is for knowledge and understanding and the heart is for feelings and emotions. Jesus audience would not have made those same distinctions. In fact they had no awareness of the brain as a center for consciousness, thought, or will. All of the minds functions in our understanding would actually be functions of the heart in their understanding. There is no word for mind in the Hebrew language. So for Jesus audience there is a significant overlap between the heart and the mind and in their eyes the heart carries out the more important functions. Today we know that at least physiologically that is not the case. A bad heart can be replaced but we are not yet to the point where we can do brain transplants, perhaps we never will be. However in the mind of Jesus audience all the aspects we attribute to the mind would have been attributed to the heart.
Your flesh gives an appearance of who you are but your heart is the reality of your nature and identity. This is where God looks when He judges us. The Pharisees who Jesus continually had problems with looked good on the outside but had wicked, evil hearts. Throughout Scripture this metaphor is used to show that God is not concerned about the outward appearance but the inward reality. While there are certainly some similarities there are also some very clear differences in our views of the heart. Loving God with all your heart requires not just doing the right things but doing them for the right reasons. God does not want you to act as if you love Him He wants really love Him. Our faith is not an act or a performance. Our love for God is not the composite of our good works and Spiritual routines. Our love for God must be true to the very core of who we are. If you do not love God with your heart then you do not really love Him at all. This passage teaches us that it is not the appearance but the reality that God is looking for.
If we really love God with all our hearts why is their so much apathy in the church? To be honest sometimes you look at the church and the people don’t seem to care about God. I mean they show once in awhile when they have nothing better to do. They want the comforts of Spiritual security but they really don’t care to make Jesus the Lord of their lives. It’s like we want God there if we need but the rest of the time we just want Him to keep quiet. I see couples all the time that have no real interest in living their lives the way the way that God designed but then they want a wedding ceremony in a church done by a preacher that talks about God. It’s like we want a Spiritual connection without having to make any real sacrifices or commitments. We want God in our lives we just don’t want Him to run our lives. So I am left to ask, do we really love God with all of our hearts?
Now for our purposes I would like to distinguish between the heart and the mind. For Jesus audience the heart was the more important and in some senses that remains true. Our mind gives us the ability to understand and express thoughts, desires, and feelings. Understanding comes from the mind. Our mind is what enables us to determine the will of God and to distinguish between good and evil. The mind governs our thoughts and determines our attitudes. This is where our Spiritual development comes from. When we come to Jesus our hearts must change but it the mind that matures to lead a person from being a spiritual infant to a spiritual leader. If the mind is the home for knowledge and understanding are we using it how we are supposed to? There is this growing problem in the church of Biblical illiteracy. It used to be you could preach a sermon and mention a Biblical characters name and you could safely assume almost all of your people were very familiar with that characters background and story. Today we have stop and spend 10-15 minutes giving the background of the character so everyone knows what you are talking about. How much time do we really spend in the word? How much time do we spend not just reading over it but truly studying it to seek the deep truths that God is trying to communicate to us? It is undeniable that most Christians do not know the Bible like they should. This is the problem Paul has with His audience in 1 Cor 3 when he tells them he gave them milk not solid food because they were not mature enough to handle it. In order to love God with all of our minds we must seek to know and to understand God through the study of His word. God has revealed so much of Himself to us in Scripture and if we really loved Him with all of our mind we would dedicate ourselves to studying the Scriptures because they tell us more about the God we love. When you love someone you naturally want to know all about them. You don’t have to be told, you dont try to find out because you are obligated to you desire from the depths of your heart to know them. We desire above all things to know and to be known by the ones we love. God knows us, but we have neglected knowing Him because truthfully we have failed to love God with all of our minds.
The word used for soul is where we get our word psyche it is used to describe the principle of life itself. The soul is what gives life to creation and is essentially the opposite of the body. The soul is the inward part of the human personality it is the inner consciousness of self. Our will and our determination is governed by the soul as it is essentially the motivation factor of our lives. Who you are as a person is essentially the result of your soul, your soul is your life, your soul is basically you. This is your personality and the composition of what makes you who you are. In the Jewish mind these elements make up the holistic view of man. So to love God heart, soul, and mind is essentially to love God with everything that you are and everything that you have. Your breath, your life, your nature, your desires, your understanding, everything about you must love God. The actions that we take as Christians are not Spiritual duties we must carry out, they are the natural fruit of a holistic love for God. When you love God heart, soul, and mind it changes the motivation for everything that you do. You no longer do good things because you’re supposed to you do them because you want to. You do not live a Christian life out of obligation to enter heaven but out of a genuine love for God. When you love God with all that you are then following His commands and living the Christian life come as natural as breathing and they come from the depths of your heart.
When you love God heart, soul, and mind what naturally follows is loving God with all your strength. When you love God with who you are on the inside you will certainly love God with who you are on the outside. This changes the way you talk, the language that you use, the relationships you have, the way you treat others, essentially this changes everything. It is not difficult to resist sexual temptation or doing inappropriate things with a boyfriend or girlfriend when you love God with all your heart because when you love Him holistically it naturally changes how you live. When you love God with who you are in affects your actions.
So do we really love God with everything we have? Millions of people are trafficked in slavery many of them young girls being sexually exploited, billions live on less that $3 a day, millions die in war, of diseases, terrorism is growing, conflict is on the rise, and here we are. We have knowledge. We have resources. We could make a difference. But what are we doing? Jesus loved the poor, the hurting, and the lost people of the world. What have we, His church done for the people that Jesus loves? What have we done for the least of these? We have the resources to make a difference so how can we sit back and do nothing. If we watch as the world suffers when we could do something about it then the love of God is not in us. We build great churches but what about hospitals, schools, shelters, and water filtration systems? We build nice buildings, and comfortable seats but are we giving the world what it desperately needs? Why is it when we have an abundance of resources there are still those who are hungry?
If you love God with all that you are in changes the way you live so if we look at our lives do we even look like we love God with all our heart? The church is designed to be God’s redemptive agent in the world. Let’s not sit back any longer and watch. Let us not sit back and wait for someone else to do what God has called us to do. I want to see us become a church that changes the world. I want to see Cornerstone become a revolution church. What will make us that, is keeping this command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we will start living this life, loving with all that we are we will change the world. We will bring lost children of God home. We will make a difference and when we love we will bring a smile to the face of our Father in Heaven. Let’s make God smile, let’s make Him proud, let’s show Him how we can live out His image in how we love Him and how we love the people of this world.
