Deuteronomy 6.4-5.
The reason people say the L
If you haven’t heard of Rabbi Moshe, he’s a big deal in rabbinic Judaism. Jews often refer to him by Rambam (or “the Rambam,” in case you confuse him with another Rambam—it’s an acronym,
Rabbi Moshe also listed the commands in order of importance. To his mind, the most important was the first of
Exodus 20.2 NKJV - “I am the L
ORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
No really; it’s a command. It identifies which God we’re to follow. There are plenty of other beings which identify themselves, or which others identify for us, as God.
Identifying which God is our God, is actually vitally important. It’s why theology books tend to begin by nailing down which God we follow: The Father of Jesus and the God of Israel. (There’s usually a bit in there about whether God exists and how we know this… which is entirely unnecessary
Okay, so that’s Rabbi Moshe’s number one command. It’s a good one. But now let’s ask God himself—or more specifically
Mark 12.28-31 NKJV - 28 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”
- 29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the L
ORD our God, the LORD is one. 30 And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’Dt 6.4-5 This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’Lv 19.18 There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Jesus identifies the most important command as what Jews call the
Deuteronomy 6.4-5 NKJV - 4 “Hear, O Israel: The L
ORD our God, the LORD is one! 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
The first part of this passage actually does the same thing as Rabbi Moshe’s number one verse: It identifies which God we follow, and that’d be the L
More than that, we’re commanded to love the L
Getting commanded to love.
But back to the folks who only define love as an emotion—like little kids who’ve had the larger culture’s sloppy, inaccurate, vague definition of love foisted on them. Such people are gonna wonder, “How can you command someone to love somebody else? Either they love ’em or they don’t.” Either you have the warm fuzzy feelings or nothing’s there. What, we’ve gotta conjure up those feelings?
No. And yes.
You are in control of your emotions.
And emotions tend to follow the actions. So when you read the apostles’ definition of love in the scriptures—
1 Corinthians 13.4-7 NKJV - 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
—notice it’s defined with verbs. Now do those verbs.
- Love has patience? Fine; be patient with God.
- Love is kind? Fine; be kind to God.
- Love doesn’t envy? Be that way with God. Don’t covet his power and authority. Stop seizing the reins whenever you don’t like where he’s going.
- Love doesn’t parade itself? Right: Stop making such a big deal about the fact you love God, and just love him. Don’t be all talk. Prove it.
- Love isn’t puffed up? Right: Stop telling God you love him more than anything, when really you love your kids more, and you’d ditch Christianity in a heartbeat if God let anything happen to your kids. Stop telling God he’s the most important thing in your life, when obviously your phone is. Stop saying God’s your first priority, when you put sleep before Sunday morning worship services. Stop lying to yourself and others. You’re certainly not fooling God any.
- Love doesn’t behave rudely: Put God’s feelings first. Really first.
- Love doesn’t seek its own: Don’t priortize your definition of love over God. True,
God is love, and God and love are kinda interchangeable… but too many people define love very differently than God does, and think if it’s love as they define it, it’s God. As a result they distort God. - Love isn’t provoked: Stop pissing God off by hurting others, and him, with your thoughtless, self-centered behavior!
- Love thinks no evil: Stop sinning. Quit looking for loopholes. Or the bare minimum of what you’ve gotta do in order to still call yourself Christian. Or what you can get away with.
- Love does not rejoice in iniquity: Stop vicariously enjoying it whenever other people are cruel.
- Love rejoices in truth. Pursue truth. Not convenient beliefs; not sayings which really appeal to you, or make you feel good. Some truths are that way, but some truths are tough. Pursue all truth.
- Love bears all things… so put up with God.
- Believes all things… so trust God.
- Hopes all things… so put your hope in God.
- Endures all things… so determine you’re sticking with God no matter what. ’Cause he’s sticking with you.
- Love doesn’t fall down.
1Co 13.8 And to be fair, we do. A lot. But when we do, remember:God’s given us grace. Pick yourself up and try again.1Jn 2.1
Obviously this is way more than a warm fuzzy feeling… and all the fleeting commitments we usually make to those fleeting feelings. This is a lifestyle.
Once we really practice the lifestyle, we’re gonna find those loving emotions about God come naturally. No, it’s not because we do love in order to feel love, as some Christians put it (and there’s a bothersome degree of
Love with all your being.
The level of commitment we apply towards loving God, is why Moses, and later Jesus, said we’ve gotta do this with everything we have. My translation now:
Deuteronomy 6.4-5 KWL - 4 “Listen, Israel: Our god is the L
ORD . - The L
ORD is One. - 5 Love your L
ORD God with all your mind, - all your life, and all your power.”
This love is gonna take our whole being. No part of our lives is to be lived in a way which doesn’t show God love.
MIND. The word I translate “mind” is actually
לֵבָב /leváv (Greek,καρδίας /kardías) “heart.” Most biblestranslate it literally, “heart.” So why’d I go with “mind”? ’Cause I’m translating it idea-for-idea.When the ancients spoke of hearts, it meant what you think with.The ancients didn’t know we think with the brain. The Egyptians thought the brains were mere head-stuffing, and little else. Aristotle believed the brain’s job was only to cool the blood. Wasn’t till the late first century that Galen of Pergamon figured out the brain controlled muscles—but he made no further guesses about higher brain functions, like thought or intellect. Thus “heart” in scripture, when it’s not referring to the literal cardiac organ, is a synonym for “intellectual capacity.” The ancients believed we think with our hearts, and feel emotion with our kidneys. The heart as our emotional center is a medieval idea, not an ancient one.
And the bible reflects the ancient idea. It’s not a science textbook! It gets God right. But the rest reflects what the ancients believed, accurate or not. God condescended to the ancients’ level, same as he condescends to our level; he doesn’t require his people to know science before
he can show us grace. So when the Law and Jesus instruct us to love God “with all your heart,” the literal translation might give us the wrong idea: We’ll think it means love him with all our emotion.And Jesus doesn’t mean that. He means our intellect. All our mind. Everything we think. All our conscious thought… and unconscious, so it’s about time we started hunting down our knee-jerk reactions, and replace them with love for God. Fear, bigotry, and prejudice has gotta go.
LIFE. Another one of those words to which Christians apply wishy-washy definitions is
נֶפֶשׁ /néfeš (Greek,ψυχή /psykhí), “soul.” Way too many of us don’tknow what a soul is, and think it’s interchangeable withour spirit. Worse, we might’ve listened to Christian pop psychology, and think the soul is a slightly less selfish version of Sigmund Freud’s idea of the id.Nope. The soul’s our lifeforce, and néfeš is interchangeably translated both “soul” and “life.”
Pr 12.10 It’s what God breathed into the first human at creationGe 2.7 thus turning him into “a living soul” (KJV ) —and when we die, the soul dies too. We get a new one at our resurrection.So our lives have to be dedicated to God’s love. We don’t just love God intellectually; we love him with our actions. After all, faith without works is dead,
Jm 2.17 and love without works is just as phony.POWER. When Moses articulated this command, he was kinda working from the inside out. There’s the stuff in our heads. From this, comes the actions we take. Then we see the effects of these actions—the
מְאֹד /mehód (Greek,δύναμις /dýnamis), the “power.” The repercussions of our decisions. The people I influence by what I do and say. The people at your command. That’s power.I mean, we regularly point out actions have consequences. And our loving actions towards God oughta produce some loving consequences.
As I said earlier, Jesus divided “power” into two separate words in
INTENT (
διανοίας /dianías). This isn’t any random stuff in our mind; this is the stuff we decide to do for God. Assuming we ever actually do it. Jesus expects we should—and others will see us in action, realize why we do it, and be affected one way or another because of it.STRENGTH (
ἰσχύος /iskhýos). Often Christians figure this means the same thing as mehód, “power.” And yeah, dýnamis and iskhýs are usually synonyms. But I’d say Jesus is trying to distinguish between our not-so-visible intentions, and our far-more-visible actions. Both should influence others.
Either way, it’s not enough to just approve of God, or like him, or agree Jesus is Lord but otherwise ignore him. We have to purpose to follow him, and do so with all our being.
Love is central to God’s character. He is love;
So, this being the case… how’re we doing?
Do we love God with all our being? Or were we just hoping to avoid hell, and playing along because passive approval is easier than active love? How much of our being is actually going into obeying this command?
’Cause really, if we follow it—and the one to love our neighbors—there’s not a lot of effort we have to put into any of the other commands.
