Jesus called it the greatest

A teacher of the law asks Jesus the question people had been arguing about for generations — out of everything, which command is the most important? It is a sincere question and a dangerous one, and Jesus answers without hedging.

“The foremost one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength.’ The second is: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ No other commandments are greater than these.” — Mark 12:29-31 (OTB)

He reached for the Shema

Notice what he did. Asked to rank everything, Jesus reached back to the daily confession every Jewish household already said out loud — the same passage from Deuteronomy 6, the one with the doorframes and the roadside and the getting up.

He did not name a new commandment. He named the one they recited and told them it outranked everything else.

Which means the visible, spoken, household-shaped life described in the last chapter is not a nice extra for people with an outgoing personality. Jesus put it at the top.

Heart, soul, mind, strength

Four words that cover the whole person, and they are worth slowing down on, because we tend to have a favorite and quietly skip the rest.

Heart is affection — actually loving him, not merely approving of him. Soul is the whole self, including the parts nobody sees. Mind is thinking, which means this is not anti-intellectual in the slightest. Strength is your body and your labor and your hours, which is where love stops being a feeling and starts costing something.

Leave any one out and the commandment starts to bend. Mind without heart becomes argument. Heart without strength becomes sentiment. Strength without soul becomes performance, which is a failure mode this class will come back to.

And the second one

Jesus was asked for one and gave two, and he attached them on purpose: love God, love your neighbor.

That is the whole architecture of disciple-making in one breath. Love for God that never reaches a neighbor has been amputated. Love for a neighbor with no God in it is kindness, which is good, and is not what he asked for.

Everything else you will learn about making disciples — the questions, the groups, the invitations — hangs off these two. If they are alive, the methods work. If they are dead, no method will save the effort.

Recite this

Love God with everything. Love your neighbor. Nothing outranks these.

Try it this week

Take the four words — heart, soul, mind, strength — and ask which one is weakest in you right now. Not which one you feel guiltiest about. Which one is actually thin. Then name one specific thing you will do about it this week.

I will strengthen ________________ by ________________, on ________________.