What Is the Greatest Commandment?
Jesus was asked to rank six hundred laws — and answered with two loves that hold everything.
Asked which commandment is greatest, Jesus answered: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37–40).
The question behind the question
The lawyer’s question was a test — rabbis debated rankings among the law’s 613 commands. Jesus reached past the catalogue to the Shema, Israel’s daily creed: Hear, O Israel… thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart. Total love, from the whole person — heart, soul, mind, strength. Not one duty among many but the root system every duty grows from.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
The second, uninvited
Asked for one commandment, Jesus volunteered a second “like unto it,” welding Leviticus 19:18 to the Shema: love thy neighbour as thyself. Like unto it — of the same nature, inseparable. John’s letters press the weld: whoever loves not his brother whom he hath seen cannot love God whom he hath not seen. The two loves are one current through two wires.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.
Everything hangs here
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” — like a door on two hinges. Every thou-shalt-not is love refusing harm; every thou-shalt is love in motion, which is why Paul can say love is the fulfilling of the law. The greatest commandment is also the great diagnosis: what we ultimately love runs our life — and grace exists because none of us has loved this way, and One has.
Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Quick answers
- Where is the greatest commandment found?
- Matthew 22:34–40, Mark 12:28–34, and Luke 10:25–28 — quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. In Luke, it leads straight into the Good Samaritan, Jesus’ answer to “who is my neighbour?”
- How can love be commanded?
- Because biblical love is loyalty and action before it is feeling — treating God as God and neighbour as self. Commanded love is practised until the affections follow; and it is first received: “we love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
- What is loving God “with all thy mind”?
- Thinking as worship: truth sought, Scripture pondered, wonder engaged (Psalm 111:2). The greatest commandment sanctifies the intellect along with the heart.
