Understanding the 2 Greatest Commandments

God says to place God first. That’s what Jesus is telling us when he says that “the good and first commandment” is to “love the LORD your God with all of your coronary heart and with all of your soul and with all of your thoughts” (Matt 22:37–8; cf. Deut 6:5) after which places the commandment to “love your neighbor” second (Matt 22:39; cf. Lev 19:18).

However why does God command us to love him? And why does Jesus establish it as the best commandment?

Why does love for God come first?

We would surprise: Does God have some type of should be liked greater than anybody else? “God forbid!” because the Apostle Paul would say.

God wants nothing from us. It’s we who want God and who acquire all good issues from loving him. We’re the sheep of his pasture (Ps 100:3), and he’s the great shepherd who guards and retains us (John 10:10) and sustains us within the lifestyle eternal (Ps 139:24). Our love for him is at all times enjoying catch-up to his prior and much more highly effective love for us.

So then, is the commandment telling us what we have now to do to earn eternal life with God? God forbid! For he’s our Father (Matt 6:9) in addition to our shepherd (Ps 23; Ezek 34), and no good father requires his kids to earn his love earlier than he loves them. Slightly, the regulation of God warns us that turning away from the love of God means turning towards dying, which is why the commandments preserve telling us to show again to God in repentance and religion.

His legal guidelines present us why our hope for salvation depends not on anything we can earn, however on the mercy of God. On this method, the commandments fulfill what Martin Luther calls their “evangelical” goal, directing our hearts towards the place the place we discover the fullness of God’s mercy and love for his straying sheep: within the εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion), as it’s referred to as in New Testomony Greek, which is to say, within the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our God is a jealous God (Exod 20:5). He needs from us an unique love, as a result of when his sheep search different shepherds, trusting in false gods and false gospels, they stroll within the methods of dying. He instructions us to like the LORD our God with our entire coronary heart as a result of we’re his possession, the sheep of his hand (Ps 95:7), and he intends for us to flourish. So he instructions us to decide on life, not dying (Deut 30:19).

The best commandment within the story of Israel

To see how love for God is the trail of life—and likewise why it’s the basis of the second commandment, to like our neighbors—we will take a look at 4 levels within the lifetime of God’s chosen and beloved folks, Israel: a life that finally ends up together with all nations in its blessing.

1. The covenant identify of God

To begin with, to love God we have to know who he’s. We are able to start by realizing his identify.

When Moses asks what’s the identify by which God needs to be identified in Israel, he replies: “I Am Who I Am” (Exod 3:14). The phrases in Hebrew may equally effectively imply: “I Will Be Who I Will Be.” Slightly than giving his folks a type of magic phrase to conjure with, just like the names of the gods of different nations, the God of Israel factors forward to who he’ll present himself to be.

The identify of God is rendered in most English BIbles as “LORD” in all-capital letters, which stands for the Hebrew יהוה, greatest transliterated YHWH, which builds on the Hebrew phrase for “I AM” (היה, Exod 3:14). It’s unsure pronounce the identify as a result of historic Hebrew writing didn’t embody vowels. Lengthy earlier than Jesus’s beginning, pious Israelites had stopped saying the sacred identify of God aloud and commenced saying “Lord” as an alternative (Hebrew אֲדֹנָי [adonai]). It is a customized Jesus himself observes, instructing us to wish not by calling upon the identify of God aloud however by calling him “Father” (Luke 11:2).

The opposite New Testomony writers observe this tradition once they say Jesus is LORD (κύριος). In so doing, they’re confessing that the identify of the LORD, which is the identify above all names, has been given to Jesus (Phil 2:9–11). Jesus is the fulfillment in person of the identify of God, essentially the most seen revelation of who God is. “I Will Be Who I Will Be” contains the incarnation of God in Christ the LORD.

2. The covenant guarantees of God

The Bible strikes us alongside towards this best of all revelations when the LORD calls to thoughts the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod 6:3–5). He guarantees to convey all Israel into this covenant, saying to them, “I’ll take you to be my folks and I shall be your God” (Exod 6:7). The phrases of the covenant are like a marriage vow during which God guarantees that he shall be their Beloved eternally. That’s who he’s and who he shall be, as he fulfills the that means of his identify.

It’s value serious about the ability of this type of promise. It does what love itself can’t do. For regardless of how a lot you’re keen on somebody, you aren’t married to them with out the marriage vow during which you promise to be theirs for the remainder of your life.

We don’t make God our personal by loving him; he makes himself our personal by his phrases of promise.

So it’s with the LORD and his folks. We don’t make God our personal by loving him; he makes himself our personal by his phrases of promise. By his phrase, the LORD turns into the God of Abraham, after which the God of Israel, after which the God who offers himself to all humanity within the incarnation of Christ, the Bridegroom who’s preached to all nations within the gospel.

3. Covenant constancy to God

We come to a 3rd factor of what’s concerned in loving God once we take into consideration what comes of marriage. A marriage is an entire life collectively for a person and a lady, which turns this man into her man, and this lady into his lady.

Likewise, what follows from the covenant between the LORD and his folks Israel is an entire life collectively for God and his folks, starting when he frees them from slavery in Egypt. The ten commandments given on Mount Sinai have a type of preface during which the LORD proclaims his identify to Israel and reaffirms that he’s their covenant God, saying, “I’m the LORD your God, who introduced you out of the land of Egypt, out of the home of slavery” (Exod 20:1). That is now who he’s; it is among the issues he meant when he instructed Moses, “I Will Be Who I Will Be.”

Because of this the first of the ten commandments is “You shall don’t have any gods in addition to me” (Exod 20:3). It is sort of a commentary on the primary and best commandment of all, which is to like God. It’s as if to say,

This marriage is unique—no different gods are allowed in it. To decide on life with the LORD your God, then, is to search out the one actual life that’s eternally. All else is false gods, deceptive imitations of actual life that in actual fact result in dying. So imagine the Phrase of God during which he publicizes who he’s, offers you his identify, and guarantees that he shall be who he shall be: Your God who brings you out of slavery and into life eternal.

For it is a Bridegroom who doesn’t die, and as his Son teaches us: He isn’t a god of the lifeless, just like the false gods Pluto or Hades, however God of the residing, with whom is life evermore (Luke 20:37–38).

What, although, does the commandment imply when it speaks of “having a god”? Luther solutions (in his dialogue of the commandment in his Massive Catechism) that to have a god is to hunt all good issues in him. That is one other strategy to communicate of the love of God.

Jesus reveals us what it means to like God when he takes the time period I AM from Exodus 3:14 and applies it to himself. “I AM the sunshine of the world,” he says (John 8:12), and “I AM the bread that got here down from heaven” (John 6:41), and “I AM the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). The best and best items on the planet are photographs and imitations of the supreme goodness of the Lord Jesus, who’s Immanuel, God with us (Matt 1:22–23). In him we discover all good issues, together with life eternal.

4. Covenant success in Christ

Fulfilling the covenant with Israel, nevertheless, required a new covenant. For alas, the commandments usually are not fulfilled, and Israel for her half is an untrue bride. She goes into exile in Babylon, removed from her dwelling within the promised land.

However the LORD, who “shall be who he shall be,” can’t be offended together with his beloved eternally, and he calls her again. He guarantees her a brand new covenant (Jer 31:31), which features a renewal of the phrases of the traditional covenant with Israel (Jer 31:33), however underneath new circumstances. For to be able to preserve his beloved eternally, the LORD guarantees to offer her a brand new coronary heart and a brand new spirit to like him and obey his Phrase (Ezek 36:26–28).

On this method, love for God is itself one thing that God guarantees to offer to his folks. Once more, it’s the goodness of God that we don’t earn by loving him, however the different method spherical: In his goodness, God guarantees to offer his folks a brand new spirit and a coronary heart that loves him.

Jesus Christ is the mediator of this new covenant (Heb 12:24), during which not solely Israel however all nations are taught to obey the commandments of God in order that he could abide with them eternally (Matt 28:19–20). So now we who usually are not Israelites may put our religion within the LORD, the God of Israel, and say, “My beloved is mine and I’m his” (Track 2:16).

From loving God to loving neighbor

The brand new covenant reveals us one thing in regards to the vocation of Israel that hyperlinks love for God with love for neighbors.

The LORD God teaches Israel to imagine in him and to don’t have any gods however him—to snatch him alone within the guarantees of the covenant—so that each one nations would possibly know the LORD and obtain him because the supreme and better of all items (Isa 45:5–6), the supply of each good factor, the true mild and life (John 8:12) and residing water (John 4:14) and bread from heaven (John 6:35). All we who imagine in Christ have been introduced into the brand new covenant in order that we could share this task of love together with his folks Israel (1 Pet 2:9–10).

To like our neighbors is to hunt their good, and we can’t do this until we all know, by religion within the Phrase of God, what their greatest and highest good is—the one good factor that can provide our neighbors endless blessedness and salvation from each evil. That’s the reason the commandment to like God is the primary and best commandment, and “the second is prefer it” (Matt 22:39). We love our neighbors as ourselves as a result of we need the identical good for them that we need for ourselves. We need nothing lower than the perfect, God himself.

Love begins with religion

It’s attribute of the love of God, who shall be who he shall be, that it retains increasing to fill the entire earth. It expands past the covenant with Abraham to incorporate all Israel, then expands within the new covenant to incorporate all nations and tongues and peoples. The love of God is thus a shared good, a life collectively for all nations who’re referred to as to imagine in him and obtain what he has promised.

It’s a love we don’t at all times see, not even in our personal hearts. For we’re commanded to belief not our personal hearts however the Phrase of God’s promise within the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what it means to stroll by religion and never by sight.

The success of God’s promise doesn’t rely on our love however on his faithfulness. There may be nothing we will do about it however imagine it’s true, as a result of God is true to his Phrase. That religion is the place our love for God begins, just like the tree from which grows all of the fruit of affection and justice and good works, and the dominion of God which is to return on earth as it’s in heaven.