Love Rules Everything Around Me
As I read Matthew 22 and Mark 12 today, I paused over the moment when Jesus is asked to identify the most important commandment. His response is familiar: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37–39, NLT). In Mark’s version, he begins with the words of the Shema from Deuteronomy 6: “The Lord our God is the one and only Lord” (Mark 12:29, NLT), a declaration that would have been deeply ingrained in Jewish daily life.
What’s interesting is how Jesus pulls together two separate passages from the Hebrew Scriptures—Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19—and places them side by side. Rather than elevating ritual laws or sacrificial practices, he points to love as the foundation. That feels both obvious and challenging at the same time. Love is a simple idea to say out loud, but what does it mean to live it out? Especially when it’s directed not only toward God but also toward others, including those who are difficult to care for.
Love as a Package Deal
The way Jesus frames these commandments also suggests they aren’t meant to be separated. Loving God fully is tied to loving others, as though the two are inseparable parts of the same calling. This isn’t just about private spirituality or public kindness, but a whole-life orientation that covers relationships in every direction. It makes me wonder how this teaching would have sounded to the religious leaders of the time, who asked the question as a test. Did they expect this kind of answer? Or was Jesus pointing them back to something they already knew but perhaps overlooked?
Another detail worth noticing is that Jesus’ answer is not just a spiritual directive but a summary of the law. By quoting these two passages, he’s saying that everything else in the Torah and the prophets rests on this foundation. It reframes religious law, not as a checklist of rules, but as a structure built entirely on love. That changes how the rest of the law might have been read or understood.
Modern Questions for an Ancient Command
It also raises practical questions. How do people today interpret these ancient words in daily life? What does it mean to love someone “as yourself” in a world where self-care and self-criticism are both strong forces? And if love is the greatest commandment, does that mean the rest of the commandments are simply expressions of what love looks like in specific situations?
Reading this section of Matthew and Mark side by side emphasizes the weight Jesus places on these two commandments. Rather than giving a complicated theological answer, he goes back to something deeply familiar and presents it as the heart of faith. Even from a historical or cultural lens, it’s remarkable how this teaching has shaped centuries of ethical thinking, both inside and outside of religious communities.