“Which is the first of all the commandments?”
We might not ask this question as sincerely as did the scribe. Usually when we start asking about the priority of one commandment versus another we are looking to find wiggle room for ourselves, to assuage or conscience which knows that our obedience has been fragmentary at best. What if there was an excuse for partial response? If we were weighing the good we chose against the good we neglected perhaps, we hope, we might be let off the hook.
Jesus answered in such a way as to close the door to any meaningful partiality in our response to the commandments.
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew adds that "the second is like it" (see Matthew 22:39), helping us to see that even between priority one, love of God, and priority two, love of neighbor, there can be no real conflict. Even the very fact that we are called to love God so completely is based on the prior fact of his love for us. He has no need of our love, but delights for us to be able to find our fulfillment in him as our greatest good. Since we see that God loves us so much it makes sense that we must also love our neighbors, whom God also loves, and love them unto him just as he does us.
John reminded he readers that they could not set one of these commandments against the other. Love for God and neighbor would either be a virtuous cycle where each mutually reinforced the other, or, lacking one, we would also lose the other as well.
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen (see First John 4:20).
The scribe who started the dialog with Jesus may have been a bit more sincere than our questions sometimes turn out to be. Even so, it seems that he and the crowd got more than they bargained for in the response of Jesus.
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,
he said to him,
“You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
The scribe seemed to have suspected or known that answer, but perhaps he was hoping for some alternative, something that would make sense of his own inability to respond as completely and entirely as the answer required. But Jesus did not do anything to mitigate the seeming impossibility of what he said. He himself was the one who said, "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (see Matthew 5:48). He called us to love with the same love which he had for the Father. He knew that this would be impossible for us alone. But we were not meant to attempt it alone.
But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible (see Matthew 19:26).
We often try to live by our own power, which either leads to failure and despair, or to our attempting to negotiate a level of acceptable obedience that is less the perfect holiness. Instead of these, let us turn toward the Lord so that he can make the impossible possible in us. We are called to walk in a path that is always going to look impossible from a human point of view. But the Lord wants to be the very source of life that makes it possible, and to trust in him to do so. It is a terrain in which we can walk only by faith.
I will heal their defection, says the LORD,
I will love them freely;
for my wrath is turned away from them.
I will be like the dew for Israel:
he shall blossom like the lily;
He shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar,
and put forth his shoots.
Or, more simply put:
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing (see John 15:5).
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