The Greatest Commandment

Matthew 22:36-40 (cf. 34-46)

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your life and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

[Jesus] knows, and Matthew wants us to know as well, that his arrest, trial and crucifixion are precisely the way in which Jesus is fulfilling the two great commandments, and the way in which he is being enthroned as David’s son, the true king of Israel, and David’s master, David’s Lord. This is how, as the son of God in a still fuller sense, he has come to rescue his people (94).

[W]hat Jesus says here about loving God, and loving one another, only makes sense when we set it within Matthew’s larger gospel picture, of Jesus dying for the sins of the world, and rising again with the message of new life. That’s when these commandments begin to come into their own: when they are seen not as orders to be obeyed in our own strength, but as invitations and promises to a new way of life in which, bit by bit, hatred and pride can be left behind and love can become a reality (95).

A. Orendorff

Love, in gospel-terms, is never mere emotion. Neither, however, is it simply benevolent action. Love is a passionate and self-sacrificing commitment to the good of another person. Or, in the case of Matthew 22:37, the good of another Person (capital “P”).

The order in Matthew 22 means that before love can be anthropological (i.e., person-to-person) it must first be theological (person-to-Person). However, before love can be expressed in either of these two directions (whether God-ward or human-ward), it must first be experienced Person-to-person: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn. 4:10-11).