Part Two
THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT OF LOVE

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-39)

Jesus’ answer to the scribe who asked him which of the hundreds of commandments first century Jews obeyed was the greatest gave more than he bargained for: not one commandment, but two that encompass one principle. The greatest commandment of Jesus is love, a love of God that comprises the whole being of each human person, and a love of neighbor that is no less than love of self.

“The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments,” Jesus said. The Ten Commandments, the Levitical and Rabbinical laws and commentaries, rituals of purification and worship – Jesus boiled it all down to love.

Our Christian faith, beginning and ending in God, is a faith rooted deeply in love. Someone cannot say “I love God” when his actions toward others show that he does not love them also. Someone cannot say “I love my neighbor” while simultaneously neglecting to love and honor the God who created them both. Love is never an “either-or” proposition for Christian’s. It has to be “both-and.”

Many examples from the life of Jesus illustrate how he understood this twin commandment of love in real life, especially when he shows a love for neighbor (all of us sinners), and a love of his Father, that no one else around him can touch.

One episode concerns a woman who was caught “in the very act of adultery,” as the story goes, and the righteous (or self-righteous) members of the community brought her to a public place – naked and certainly humiliated – to execute her according to the dictates of the law, by stoning. (John 8:3-11) They brought her to Jesus and explained about her sin and punishment, and then (“to test him”) asked, “What do you say?”

The scene we know so well from the Gospel of John is famous. Jesus bends over and writes on the ground, saying nothing. They persist, “to have some charge to bring against him.” He stands up and delivers one of the greatest lessons he ever taught in the gospels: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Bending down again to write on the ground, surely Jesus knew how they would respond. One by one they went away – the elders first – until Jesus was alone with the woman. “Has no one condemned you,” he asks. “No one, sir,” she replies. “Neither do I condemn you. Go (and) from now on do not sin any more.”

In their zeal to serve the law of God down to the very letter – to show how intensely they love God with every fiber of their being – the scribes and Pharisees in this story neglect to love their neighbor (in this case the woman) as they love themselves. They are ready to stone her without thinking twice, and without recognizing what Jesus has tried to teach again and again: love entails not merely obedience, but also compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.

Notice that Jesus does not condone sin; he admonishes the woman to go and not to sin again. He does this, not out of misplaced leniency or personal weakness, but again out of love. Jesus knows that his great commandment of love means reaching out, often courageously and standing up to others. Love means speaking and doing what is best for the person. In this case, Jesus knew that it was best for the woman to experience God’s love and mercy, and also to be reminded that (as Saint Paul later taught) sin leads to death. She very nearly experienced that reality, and now Jesus gives her a second chance at life.

Another example is illustrated by one of Jesus’ parables, often called “The Prodigal Son” (cf. Luke 15:11-32). The story is so familiar that it needs the briefest retelling. The younger son, impetuous and eager to go out on his own, leaves his father, family and country behind, squandering his inheritance in sinful living. At last when he finds himself in the dregs of life, he comes to his senses and returns home. His father receives him with great love and joy, which the wretched boy did not expect. The elder son, in anger, demands an explanation, to which the father replies, “your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found” (Luke 15:32).

The younger son in this story shows disdain for God’s law by his actions. He leaves all that has real meaning in his life behind, including, we may suppose, the practice of his faith. By turning his back on God and neighbor, home and family, he shows himself to be unworthy of any love that would have to be earned. But the actions of the father show what Jesus is trying to teach us: the love that conforms to the great commandment does not have to be earned – it is freely given, almost recklessly. In spite of the fact that the son apparently loved not God, nor neighbor, nor even himself, God’s mercy reached out to him in his father’s love.

These two examples and others show that, in the life and teaching of Jesus and in our lives, we who profess to be his followers and disciples, love for God and love for neighbor go hand in hand. They appear to be two commandments in the way Jesus responded to the question of the scribe in Matthew’s gospel, but Jesus shows them to be that one great commandment. Love for God and for neighbor are inseparable. This simple aspect of the teaching of Jesus is a great foundation of our Christian faith.