He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”; and, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Luke 10:27 (NIV)
The Great Commandment
Some people who were hoping to get a close-up view of the Ten Commandments at the Royal Ontario Museum back in 2009 were left out in the cold because of huge crowds. The Ten Commandments were unveiled in October that year for a two-week run as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, which opened at the museum at the end of June. But because of their age, the Ten Commandments are fragile and can only be open to public viewing for 80 hours at a time.
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I’m sure you have received forms from the government or your bank with pages of therefores and whereases. We might glance at the first paragraph or two, and then our eyes glaze over from the legalese that it contains. The Jewish religion in Jesus’ days was incomprehensible to the average person. The religious scholars spent their lives trying to make sense of it all. Jesus knew that, and as usual took pity on the people, and on us. He broke the entire law into its basics. In Luke 10:27 we read, “He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” The entire law of God is basically two commandments – love God fully and love others as you love yourself. That may sound easy enough, but the reality is we still struggle with this. We allow sin to mar our desire to love God with heart, soul and strength. We struggle to love ourselves, which makes it impossible to love others. Only in Jesus is all of this possible. Trust Him.
These have been words from the heart.
Bob Beasley