"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matthew 22:36-40.
When I first went to seminary, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect when it came to the course content and the requirements for a Master's degree in Christian education. The course requirements included a hefty dose of theology courses, including a six-hour, full year course called Systematic Theology, a full year, eight hour course surveying the scope of the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, a course on the Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ, and eight different electives covering individual books of the Bible.
That sounded like an awful lot of heavy reading and serious study. But it turned out to be the single best period of discipleship in the word of God in my entire life, prior to, and since that time.
There were many of those "Ah Ha!" moments as things I'd heard taught in Sunday School and preached in church suddenly connected with something that explained them in detail, and opened my eyes to a clearer understanding of something about which I either didn't understand at all, or had questions that needed answers. It became clear why one of the courses was called, "systematic," because the scriptures which God inspired 40 different authors to write lays out, in careful detail, the movement of God through a period of history during which he revealed to his human creation his perfect means for redemption from sin and restoration to the relationship for which he created humans in his own image in the first place.
One of the keys to understanding the whole of scripture is understanding that because Jesus was God in the flesh, and, as Paul tells us in Colossians, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him," the words of Jesus are the primary key to understanding and interpreting all of the rest of the Bible.
"Jesus is the criterion by which all scripture must be interpreted," I can remember several of my professors emphasizing. So that sets us up to understand the meaning of these words from Jesus, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, and what they reveal to us that we can learn through the school year as a theme.
1. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."
Jesus says this is the greatest commandment, one of two on which he says "hang all of the law and the prophets." What is meant by that, is that this is a life priority. It is essential for us to be faithful believers and followers of Jesus, who has removed our sin and provided us with forgiveness, to make the adoration of the God who created us a priority in all of our life. And if we have this priority straight, it means that we are committed to living in a way that worships God by giving him glory through the life we live. If this commandment is followed, everything else follows. And without getting this straight, it is not possible to be obedient to any of the others.
2. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Translating the phrase "is like it" from the original Greek text gives some insight into what Jesus meant. He is equating the two commandments, not elevating one above the other. It is not possible to love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and not love another human being who is also created in his image. The term "neighbor" has a fairly specific meaning, according to the way Jesus used it, and defined it. It is not just having affection or appreciation for humanity as a whole, though that is part of what he intended. It is also not just those who live in our immediate proximity. It is all other human beings with whom we share community, those whose lives we interact with and touch, and who touch and interact with us at all times across the scope of our lives.
A church is a "community" full of people who are, by definition, our neighbor. So is our school, including the parents, students and school staff who work there. For some of our students, it may be the other participants in the summer program in which they are engaged. It is all of one's family members, and it also includes those who fit the smaller definition of "neighbor" by living in close proximity.
The term "love your neighbor" is equal to "love the Lord your God," because these two concepts are linked by Jesus. If one does not love his neighbor, then he cannot love God. Likewise, if one does not love God, he cannot love his neighbor.
Our school is also a community, one in which students spend more time than anywhere else except at home. So everyone in it, by definition, is the neighbor of everyone else. There are some neighbors with whom each student spends more time, namely their own classmates and teacher. But the commandment applies to all, though it becomes more difficult to be obedient among those who wind up getting to know us best.
The Essence of God's Nature is Found in His Creation
God created the world and everything in it. But out of all that God created, it was humanity alone that he created "in his image." Since God is infinite, and does not have a physical body, what is meant by being created in his image has to do with who we are. Jesus tells us this in the first part of this verse, when he says that we must love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Heart represents the physical body, sustained and nourished by the blood that the heart pumps through the arteries, veins and capillaries. The soul is the essence of our being, our identity, that part of us which makes us human, has emotions and feelings, and senses the presence of God's indwelling spirit. The mind represents our intellect, what we are able to know as we have this gift of being created in God's image, so that our body, soul and spirit are one being with the intellect to understand and the free will to make decisions regarding our own life.
Every human being has the image of God in them. And that is exactly why Jesus made these two commandments equal. It is not always easy to see God's image in others, but there are times when it is not easy for others to see it in ourselves. But yet, that's our responsibility and purpose as a human being, created by God in his image, to reflect the nature and character of God. And we do that when we demonstrate love to our neighbor.
It does not take much in the way of observation to see human beings, all around us, who do not love their neighbor as themselves. But, in the community of a Christian school, shouldn't it make some kind of difference? Our school is a place where we can teach this biblical principle and then be able to observe the difference it makes to each of our students, compared to being in a community where loving their neighbor is not a priority for anyone else.
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