The Greatest Command?

When asked by the Pharisees and a lawyer which commandment was the greatest (Matthew 22:36), Jesus responded by summing up the law and the prophets in two basic commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The Greeks differentiated between concepts of love giving each a separate word: Eros or physical love, Phileo or brotherly love from which we get Philadelphia, and Agape or God’s kind of love which is infused with sacrifice. 

Thinking about the concept of love in our day and age loses much of the substance of the term love. So rarely we consider sacrificial love except through the concepts of military, sacrifice in defense of country, or in a similar mode police and emergency workers who might sacrifice to rescue others from death or get them medical attention. There are occasions where a parent might sacrifice their lives for the lives of the children even giving body parts such as kidneys or eyes. These may be the closest to the agape kind of love described by the Greeks.

Mostly we think in terms of Philéo or brotherly love where we are kind to each other but not sacrificial in the sense of the cost involved in sacrifice for another.

Perhaps because we see ourselves as primarily physical beings we think in terms of intimate physical access love. Many products are sold on the basis of physical attraction or physical satisfaction that things bring such as food, excitement, etc.

The Scripture draws our attention to God’s kind of love as described in 1 Corinthians 13 where love is described as patience, kindness, not envious, not a braggart, not proud or arrogant but rather humble, not rude but behaves politely, considerate of others, respectful of proper conduct, does not insist on its own way, unselfish, not irritable or touchy, not resentful or hold grudges (bears all things), is not happy to see injustice, evil or wrong prevail (believes all things), hopes all things, endures all things. The discussion of the division between the sheep and the goats also sheds light on God’s concept of love: When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me something to drink? When I was a stranger did you take me in? When I was naked did you clothe me? When I was sick, did you visit me? When I was in prison, did you come to me? Insomuch as you did it to one of these people, you did it for me. (Matthew 25:31 - 46)

Will we be like Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt, listened to God receiving the Commandments on Mount Sinai, looked at the heavenly tabernacle and built an earthly tabernacle where God and the people would meet, knew God face to face and yet as they prepared to enter the Promised Land was denied entrance after he acted arrogantly and rashly by striking the rock the second time? (Deuteronomy 34:1 – 12) Will we be like Joshua and Caleb who as spies saw God’s vision of who they were and spoke the report of faith? We are well able to take the land.