“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
The wrong answer to the question can be a disaster. If we don't recognize what is most important we will run the risk of playing lesser things against each others, serving, not finally the good, but ourselves. But, unfortunately for us, we tend to be more willing to take any principle but God and make it absolute, for all other rules remain lifeless, and to that extent less challenging, apart from him. Are lifeless rules so bad? They are in that they don't have a voice to convict us when we put them into the service of our evil desires and selfish pride. And there is nothing in this world that is truly absolute, nothing that can bear the weight of being made the final good toward which all things are directed. This can only be God himself.
You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
It is of more than passing interest that Jesus adds our minds as faculties which ought to be given entirely to the Lord to the original reference from Deuteronomy which mentioned heart, soul, and strength (see Deuteronomy 6:5). In this world into which philosophy and science was beginning to emerge he wanted to make the point that even these impressive systems would be adrift without reference to the Holy One of Israel.
What about us? How are our hearts, our souls, and our minds? Are we using the strength we have been given by God to direct ourselves back to God at every level of our being? The first commandment can admit of answers that are more imaginary than real. We can imagine ourselves to be God directed, but unless we also check ourselves against the second commandment, which is like the first, we can't be confident that we are actually fulfilling the first.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.
We see again and again how God does not want us to separate our love of him from love of our neighbor. Jesus says that whatever we do to the lowest and least of our sisters and brothers we do also to him. He tells Saul that he is in fact persecuting he himself, not merely his followers. Yet we can love our neighbors apart from God in a way that harms them. Our love of neighbor too must be ordered and directed to God who is the goal and purpose of the life of all, their finally blessedness and hope.
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. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (see First John 4:20-21).
Ruth gives us a clue of how putting God first can be done, and how it can order our lives toward our greatest flourishing. She does not follow her sister back to their native land. So moved was she by the love she experienced in the household of Naomi that she desired to not only remain with her but to embrace her faith. This is the result that loving others unto God can have. Whereas Orpah was more of a daughter-in-law only, Ruth became true family, to both Naomi and to the God she served.
But Ruth said, “Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you!
For wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge,
your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
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