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The lesson library / Lesson 16

The greatest commandments

Show how love for God and neighbor summarizes and directs obedience without canceling particular commandments.

Humanity, sin, law, and covenant

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Deuteronomy 6:1-25 · Luke 10:25-37 · 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 · 1 John 3:10-24

Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment. His answer is sometimes repeated as though He had been asked which commandments could be discarded. Those are different questions. A summary can explain the purpose of the details without making the details disappear. Love for God and neighbor gives obedience its direction, and Scripture gives love a meaning more definite than personal approval.

Read Deuteronomy 6:1-15

1 Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances, which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that you might do them in the land that you go over to possess;
2 that you might fear the LORD your God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you—you, your son, and your son’s son, all the days of your life; and that your days may be prolonged.
3 Hear therefore, Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with you, and that you may increase mightily, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised to you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
4 Hear, Israel: The LORD is our God. The LORD is one.
5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
6 These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart;
7 and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.
8 You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.
9 You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
10 It shall be, when the LORD your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you–a land with great and good cities which you didn’t build,
11 and houses full of all good things which you didn’t fill, and cisterns dug out which you didn’t dig, vineyards and olive trees which you didn’t plant, and you shall eat and be full;
12 then beware lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
13 You shall fear the LORD your God; and you shall serve him, and shall swear by his name.
14 You shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples who are around you,
15 for the LORD your God among you is a jealous God, lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.

The command reaches the heart, the household, ordinary conversation, and the next generation. God is not asking for a small religious corner of an otherwise independent life. Notice the warning about prosperity. A person can remember God vividly while seeking help and then become forgetful once the cupboards are full. Teaching children involves more than arranging for someone else to provide a lesson. It includes the way God's word is spoken about and acted upon at home.

Read Luke 10:25-37

25 Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
28 He said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.”
29 But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”
30 Jesus answered, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
31 By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
32 In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33 But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion,
34 came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35 On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’
36 Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?”
37 He said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

The question about the neighbor can become an effort to determine whom it is safe to ignore. Jesus tells a story that makes the evasion difficult. The person who helps spends time, takes responsibility, and uses his own resources. The lesson is not that discernment never matters. It is that religious identity is no substitute for mercy. A person can have an excellent explanation of the command while walking past the person to whom obedience would actually apply.

A person can call a refusal loving and be right, or call it loving and merely be protecting his own convenience. The label does not decide the matter. Examine the actual duty and the effect on the neighbor. Giving someone what he requests may enable harm; refusing may be necessary. Conversely, claiming to act for his good can become an excuse never to listen to him. Biblical love requires truth and attention to the person. It is more demanding than either automatic approval or automatic suspicion. The command asks for another person’s real good under God’s authority, not simply the response that makes the speaker feel virtuous.

Read 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1 If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud,
5 doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil;
6 doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part;
10 but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.
12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known.
13 But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love.

This chapter is often read at weddings, but Paul's immediate setting is the church's use of gifts. A remarkable ability does not establish that the person exercising it is loving. Even impressive sacrifice can be corrupted by the desire to be seen. Love also rejoices with the truth. That prevents the chapter from being reduced to agreeable behavior. Sometimes telling the truth is costly; sometimes remaining patient while telling it is the harder part. Both belong in the same Christian life.

Read 1 John 3:10-24

10 In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn’t do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who doesn’t love his brother.
11 For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another—
12 unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s righteous.
13 Don’t be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.
14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death.
15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.
16 By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
17 But whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, then closes his heart of compassion against him, how does God’s love remain in him?
18 My little children, let’s not love in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth.
19 And by this we know that we are of the truth and persuade our hearts before him,
20 because if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.
21 Beloved, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have boldness toward God;
22 so whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight.
23 This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he commanded.
24 He who keeps his commandments remains in him, and he in him. By this we know that he remains in us, by the Spirit which he gave us.

John moves from Christ laying down His life to a believer seeing a brother in need. That movement prevents grand language from replacing ordinary generosity. It is easier to say that one would do something heroic in a hypothetical crisis than to help with a modest need this afternoon. The passage also keeps faith in Christ and love together. Neither a harsh orthodoxy nor an agreeable unbelief represents the whole command. The truth is to be believed and lived.

Choose a duty toward God and a duty toward another person that you have been postponing. Ask what faithful love requires in those actual circumstances. It may involve generosity, truth, restraint, or a difficult correction. Love becomes much easier to define when it has to do something besides describe the speaker's intentions.

Consider your perspective

Love for God and neighbor gives obedience its direction without canceling its content. Real love can say no to wrongdoing while still treating a difficult person as someone whose good matters.

Put it into practice

Choose someone outside your usual circle of concern. Offer a specific form of help or truthful encouragement that serves that person's good without enabling harm.

Reflect and respond

  • Whom have you excluded from practical concern?
  • How can you speak truth without contempt?
  • Where do good intentions need to become specific help?

Passages and further study

Scripture quotations are from the public-domain World English Bible (WEB). Historical confessions are study aids, subordinate to Scripture. This independent lesson is not an official denominational statement.