A scribe was at the confrontation
Jesus had with the Sadducees, described in Mark 12:18-27. He was so impressed
with the Lord’s response to His opponents that he came to have an exchange with
the Lord. His question to Jesus was, “What commandment is the foremost of all?”
In other words, what is the most important of all God’s commandments? Jesus answered
him in verses 29-31. “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all
your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The first part of the Lord’s response was the Shema Israel, a
direct quotation of Deuteronomy 6:4. In every worship service in the synagogue,
this “Hear, O Israel,” was the opening sentence. Every devout Jew would also
recite this every morning before he set out on the road and every evening when
he returned home. It would also be worn around their forehead or wrist in a phylactery. This was literally the creed of the Jew. The
second part, “To love your neighbour as yourself” came from Leviticus 19:18.
Jesus
actually fused Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18 and made it into one. It was
sheer genius! What He did was to sum up the Ten Commandments of Moses into the
Two Great Commandments. The loving God part summarizes the first four
commandments of God recorded in Exodus 20:2-11. The second part about loving
one’s neighbor summarizes the last six commandments recorded in Exodus 20:12-17.
In so doing the Lord has shown us that Loving God and loving fellow human being
must go hand in hand. Jesus knew that it would be harder to love God Whom we cannot
see with our eyes, if we cannot even
love our neighbors whom our eyes can see. Notice also that the second commandment
states to love one’s neighbors as oneself. Jesus had revolutionized love for
us: we are not only to love God but also to love men.
On
hearing the Lord’s response, that scribe commended the Lord. He said, “Right,
Teacher; You have truly stated that He is One, and there is no one else besides Him; and to love Him with all the heart and with all the
understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbour as himself, is
much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And from the way this
scribe responded, Jesus could see that he was thinking for himself. He saw that
the scribe knew that the law is a spiritual dynamic and not just a religious system. So He complimented that scribe and told him that he was not
far from the Kingdom of God. Whether he finally made it into the Kingdom we are
not told. But it goes to show that one can be so near yet so far.
Knowing God
with the head is different from knowing Him in the heart. One deals with
theory, the other with experience. The question is: Do we know God with our heads
and also experience Him in our hearts? It is good to know about God but it must
be translated into knowing Him in experience. Let us get to know Christ more
clearly, then to follow Him more nearly but more importantly, let us love Him
more dearly!
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