The greatest and first command is also the fairest!

Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. 35 One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: 36 "Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most important?" 37 Jesus said, "'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind' 38 This is the most important, the first on any list. 39 But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' 40 These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them."

Food for Thought!

A religion scholar asked Jesus, "Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most important?" He answered, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" Therefore, the greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God. And Jesus says to do this not only with our heart and soul but also with our mind.

What does it mean to love God “with all your mind”? Since the first activity of the mind is “thinking,” to love God with the mind is to love him in the way we use our mind to think. Loving  God means treasuring God, means cherishing, delighting, admiring, and valuing God. It’s the sort of thing Paul was expressing for Jesus when he said, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8). Loving God is not about theory nor theology. The Devil can think true thoughts about God. But such thinking would not be love. For thinking to be loving, it must be more than thinking.

Loving God with all YOUR mind means that give to God what He gave you; love him the way God made you. That is why the greatest and first command is also the fairest. It teaches us: we can and should only love God according to what he has given us and made us. The emphasis here is on the word YOUR: You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. God made us different and would not be fair if He expected me to love him as you do, or vice versa. I can only love God with all MY heart, all MY soul, all MY mind. The same to you: you can only love God with all YOUR heart, with all YOUR soul, and with all YOUR mind.

In practice we are saying, that not everybody prays with the same devotion. For instance, in general, women are more religious and devoted than men. And God would be unfair if He expected men to love him with a woman's heart, soul and mind. Or vice versa. Nobody gives what they don't have! And everybody should give according to what they are and have. God will judge each one of us according to what He made us and gave us. Thus, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. 

Since Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, loving him is loving his Father. “Whoever has seen me,” he said, “has seen the Father” (John 14:9). This means that knowing and loving Jesus is the test of knowing and loving God. “The one who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).

It means that our love for God must issue in love for men. But it is to be noted in which order the commandments come; it is love of God first, and love of man second. Why? Well, because it is only when we love God that man becomes lovable. There are some people out there that are unlovable; there are people we love only for God's sake. Without God, some people are simply not worth our love. Wise is the person whose love of work, of family and friends, of colleagues and peers, and of life itself stems from his love of God.

Another thing to note and do is that the first man to love is YOU. Sometimes we forget this basic truth. Let's look again at Jesus' answer:

Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.'"

Do you notice that the verb "love" appears three times? There is love of God, love of others, and love of yourself. For Jesus, true love must express itself in three dimensions. These three dimensions are (a) love of God, (b) love of neighbour, and (c) love of oneself. The first two are positively commanded; the last one is not commanded but presumed to be the basis of all loving. The commandment to love your neighbour as yourself presumes that you love yourself.

No one gives what they don't have! You can't give love to others if you hate yourself; you can't be nice to others when you have a bad day. Do you realize that when you have bad day, you are nasty to people? You can't smile at people when you're sad. But, the day you're happy, you'll treat everybody nicely. We don't shout at people when we are happy. In other words, you treat others in as much as you treat yourself; you love others in as much as you love yourself. Jesus is saying, Be happy and everybody around you will be happy; and when everybody is happy, God is happy too. For the glory of God is man fully alive.

So, in theory, love of God comes first, then neighbour, then self. But in practice, love of self is first, then of neighbour, then of God. When we love ourselves we will love our neighbour, and when we love neighbour we love God.

1 John 4:20

If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see?