"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
In a way the answer to the question seemed obvious. The Shema that Jesus would recite was so drilled into the people of Israel as to seem to leave no room for doubt. But the Pharisees were known for subtlety and the one who asked was a scholar of the law. He probably had a plan for anything he thought Jesus might say, to then ask what any answer would mean in certain cases when balanced against certain other laws. The Pharisees themselves obviously had such a system of balance, one which put relating to love of neighbor in a distant second place to ostensibly focus on the love of God. This scholar probably also thought that Jesus must have something unique and novel to say, something that made his teaching so popular with the crowds, something that could be shot down with his detailed scholarly knowledge.
You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
If Jesus had left it here it would have been hard to argue. But it would also seem to have been the same thing that everyone else was teaching as well. But it was and it wasn't. Everyone said this commandment was first but many used it to justify the neglect and abuse of their neighbor. Rather than letting the law dictate the terms of their obedience they used the law as was convenient to bolster their pride. Jesus made clear that he wasn't saying exactly the same thing as the Pharisees by what he went on to say.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.
If Jesus had simply said that the second most important was to love one's neighbor as oneself it would have been less impactful. Then it could still be ignored and neglected anytime God could be brought in as an excuse. But by introducing it saying that the "second is like it" and that the "whole law" "depends" on both he made it clear that there was no room for the sort of maneuvering the Pharisees utilized to make the law mean whatever was convenient for them.
Love of neighbor was like love of God because it was meant to stem from the same love. Self and other were meant to be loved for God's sake, since God himself made and loved both oneself and one's neighbor. One could not truly claim to love the God who was invisible while at the same time neglecting his beloved creatures. Nor could one love self or neighbor truly while ignoring God, for self and neighbor were made to find true fulfillment only in God alone.
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 answer of Jesus provides a very practical measure for our love of God, in that we should see it reflected in our love for our neighbors. It remain at only at the level of ritual or abstraction. But neither can it be merely humanitarian, tending only to the bodies of others while neglecting their spirits. It calls us to build a civilization founded on something greater than mere toleration and balance of competing interests. It calls us to strive more and more for unity of hearts and minds in the worship of God that alone can give us true fulfillment. It was no doubt exactly such love as this that Ruth perceived in Naomi. May we too become such persuasive witnesses to the love that we have first received from God.
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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