What is the Greatest Commandment in the Bible?

This is one of the most Jewish – and most famous – teachings of Jesus. It begins with a Pharisee, who is also a lawyer, asking Jesus a question to test him.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Torah?”

Jesus said to him:

“’You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like it:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

On these two commandments hang all the Torah and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:35-40

Look at the graphic above and you will see that the Hebrew letters are hanging from the line above them. When we write English words, we set the English letters on a line. In both languages, the line serves the same purpose – it supports the words hanging from it or setting on it.

“The Torah and the Prophets” are the names of the first two sections of the Jewish Bible today. They were two different groups of scrolls in the first century. The point Jesus made was this:

These Two Commandments are the Line

That God hung all of the words of the Scriptures on:

Without “loving God with all of your heart

and loving your neighbor as yourself,”

the words of the sacred scriptures collapse.

Jesus simply repeated the Creator’s Vision & Values for Humanity we saw in Genesis 1, but he did it in his own words:

Protect and preserve your life and your neighbor’s life,

make your life and your neighbor’s life more functional

and increase the quality of your life and your neighbor’s life!

Obviously, if just people that value the words of their Bibles did this:

A lot of people would not be destroying and threatening each other’s lives,

making each other’s lives less functional, decreasing each other’s quality of life

and creating chaos instead of order in the world!

I would like to know how many of the people creating the chaos we are witnessing today "believe in the God in Genesis" or "believe in the Jesus of Matthew, Mark and Luke?" 

Thank you for reading this. Please share and discuss it with others.

May your life be blessed with an abundance of TOV,
Jim Myers

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