THE FIRST AND GREATEST!

 

Thursday, November 12, 2020

 

THE FIRST AND GREATEST!

 

Matt 22:35-40

35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

 

           At the time of this question, there were 613 laws observed by the Jews. According to the Babylonian Talmud, the negative commandments number 365, which coincides with the number of days in the solar year, and the positive commandments number 248, a number ascribed to the number of bones and main organs in the human body. The question, then, becomes a reasonable one to ask one claiming to be the Messiah. We know this was a trap by a self-important lawyer.

 

           All those laws can be boiled down to the original TEN given to Moses on tables of stone written by the finger of God. These ten contain both positive and negative requirements but they were only ten and these can be counted on the fingers of a man’s hand.

 

           The Ten Commandments can be divided by two. Five commandments define our proper relationship to God and the remaining five define our proper relationship with others. It should have been simple, but men asked so many questions that the number grew to a mind blurring 613 rules.

 

           Jesus reduced even the Ten Commandments to TWO! The first related to our relationship to God. We are to love Him with all that we are and all that we have. This love shall have no challengers! The second commandment relates to our relationship to others and is to be completely selfless in all its applications. Love others in the same manner and intensity as you love yourself. I dare say, we generally fail at this.

 

Lord, today let me love you with all that I am and yield to you all that I have. Let me love others as I love myself – and let me not confuse things further by adding conditions and excuses. In both these things, Lord, I will need both your help and your grace. AMEN