In the 22th Chapter of Matthew there is an interesting story where a lawyer of the Jewish law asked Jesus Christ a question. The lawyer, while partaking in a religious interrogation of Jesus, seemed to have good intent in asking the question he did. What did he ask?
Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Matthew 22:36
Why did he care? What did it matter what the greatest commandment was? Well from my study of various commentators, it seems that various Jewish schools of thought at the time had been discussing the issue with no little contention about the issue. They were interested in discovering the greatest commandment(s) as was the query put forth by the lawyer in the story.
Here is the response that Jesus gave:
… Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Matthew 22:37-39
That there is an answer and that Jesus gave it so briefly and definitively is amazing. However, as a moral philosopher I am more interested in the next thought that Jesus added almost as an explanation for why he gave the answer that he did:
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Matthew 22:40
On these hang all the law and the prophets.
Jewish scholars seem to agree that under the law of Moses there are 613 commandments. I imagine that people in the days of Christ were not so different than we are today. There were philosophers love to figure out the reasons behind everything. People who search for the most succinct and elegant way to describe phenomena.
I was under the impression that certain keepers of the Jewish law had a similar fascination; they were trying to figure out which laws were the core laws. They were trying to discover which laws explained all of the other ones. It was my understanding that this was an element of the discussion about the greatest commandment. I remember hearing this somewhere, but I have’t been able to find the source for that. Even if it was not, Jesus made is so by saying what he did about them.
Let me clarify the argument, because this is the linchpin of my discussion going forward.
Jesus is saying that all of the other 613 commandments of the law of Moses, and presumably all of the commandments in the higher law he taught, all come back to and are derived from these two great commandments. This is what it means for them to “hang on” the two great commandments. Not only the laws, but also the worlds and righteous works of all the prophets can be understood in reference to these two great commandments. That is what Jesus was saying.
Loving the Lord thy God
I think that most people will be amenable to the idea that loving God and loving our fellow man are great and everything revolves around them. (If you don’t agree I’d love to carry this debate on to the comments.)
For now I will continue with looking at the profound implications of this idea.
So, what does it mean to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind?”
The first thing people’s minds jump to seems to be, that “If ye love me keep my commandments.” This is certainly true; if we love God then we should and will keep his commandments. That’s great, but I think there is a LOT more to it than that. Let me explain.
If that’s as deep as we go into the first great commandment then it can be reduced to: keep the commandments. Are you starting to see why this might not be the extent of what this commandment means?
We already know that we should keep the commandments, that is not the question that Jesus was answering.
Imagine if we substitute this phrase in for Jesus’s answer to the lawyer.
Master, what is the which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus answered and said, [Keep the commandments]. This is the first and great commandment.
There is no explanatory power and it doesn’t even make logical sense! It makes even less sense in Jesus Christ’s additional statement. To again rephrase it with this interpretation: The law (which is made up of commandments) and the prophets hang on keeping the commandments…
It’s like the theological equivalent of saying, “rule number 1 is obey the rules.”
Okay, I hope I’ve made my point.
So if loving God with all of our hearts, isn’t just doing what he says, then what is it?
Loving God
What does it mean to love someone, especially the kind of love that Jesus describes? He says that we are to love with all of our heart, soul, and mind.
While there are many ways to interpret this, let me offer a working definition.
To love with our heart, with have to love the person that they are. When we love with the heart we care about a person and we want them to be happy. However, you can love someone and still not agree or approve of everything that hey do.
God asks more of our love for him. To love with our soul, we love what they love what they want and what they do. When we invest our soul in someone then we are all in. We are willing to do whatever they want and become what they want. It would be easy to say that this is the greatest kind of love, but Jesus describes a deeper love still.
For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?
Mosiah 5:13
To love with our mind we have to thoroughly know them and understand them. It’s not enough to be blindly obedient or go through the motions, no matter how much energy there is behind it. God wants us to love him with our intelligence, with our understanding. He wants us to love him in truth.
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
John 17: 3
It is interesting to note that this is not the kind of love we are commanded to have for our neighbors. It is reserved for God.
These principles of having Faith in Jesus Christ and knowing His and God’s character are first two principles Joseph Smith taught in the School of the Prophets as recorded in the Lectures on Faith.
This means that we are to love God’s nature and his divine attributes, we are to love his creations and especially this world that he has created for us, and we are to know him and love his ways.
It would to far beyond the scope of this article to go into a description of God’s nature and its implications on the commandments. There are two things about God that I want to highlight as part of this analysis of the two great commandments.
God of Love
We love him, because he first loved us.
1 John 4:19
The First of God’s traits that underpins the law and the prophets is that of God’s love for us. They would be terrible commandments indeed if those commandments and words of the prophets were not sent in love. It is this love that is the foundation of our confidence in Him and His actions towards us.
Its doesn’t exactly explain why the commandments are the way they are, but is does help us understand why they commandments are intended to do and why we have them at all. But it does help us by making clear that the commandments that God gives are intended as an instrument of God’s love. It says that all the words of the prophets come from this place of love. Every warning and punishment, blessing and boon, comes from a place of Godly love.
For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
Moses 1:39
Every commandment that God gives will lead to happiness for those that adhere to it. That is a truth on which hangs the commandments.
We love God, which means that we strive to know, love, and uphold what he loves. By understanding and loving this Godly attribute, it’s pretty clear why “the second is like unto it.” Part of our love of God is our love of our neighbors.
When we love God we ourselves will be driven by this love. But this love is not the first commandment. It loving others was the first commandment then Jesus would have just said so. There is something else that comes from our love of God that forms a more fundamental element of the commandments. A bigger hook on which the law and the prophets hang.
God of Truth
… I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world;
And that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one
Doctrine and Covenants 93:2-3
Of all of the traits of God, I think that there is one that has particular explanatory power. This is that God is a god of truth.
Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.
Daniel 4:37
God knows everything. He knows how the earth works, how the galaxies turn in the heavens, he knows the history of mankind and its future. He knows us better than any earthly parent knows their own children. It is from this perspective that God gives us his commandments. This truth could be frightening except that this comes after the previous truth that God loves us.
God loves truth, he abides in truth and his commandments reflect that. We, in loving God, ought to love truth as well. But loving truth might feel very abstract. How should a love of truth affect my actions, especially the things that God commands of us. With that in mind, the thing I want to explain is why our love of truth, as God loves it, should influence our actions. I also want to talk about why truth should be considered before love.
Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.
Joshua 24:14
Truth and the Commandments
And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;
Doctrine and Covenants 93:24
Truth is an interesting thing. Everybody likes to talk about “my truth” or their own understanding, but true truth is deeper than that. Truth is things are they really are, and a valuable life skill is realizing that “my truth” is rarely the same as real truth.
… I know that the words of truth are hard against all uncleanness; but the righteous fear them not, for they love the truth and are not shaken.
2 Nephi 9:40
I keep finding myself wanting to talk about the value of truth more generally. There is so much to be said about truth. As a philosopher it’s one of my primarily interests. I hope that in this discussion I can explain a bit about why that is. Let me give an example of how truth sometimes feels like it contradicts love.
Let’s say that you have a friend that loves gambling. Like a genuine delight in the process of placing their goods on the line for the chance of greater gain. To match their luck, skills, and intuition against others. If this friend asks you if they should keep gambling what do you tell them?
If love means helping others be happy, then acting according to love could say that you encourage them to do what will make them happy. In which case you might tell them (or yourself if you happen to be in the same situation as the friend in this story) that they should keep doing what makes them happy.
However, gambling is commonly understood to be a potentially highly self destructive activity. It sucks many into financial ruin. Maybe not today and not everyone, but when their self control lessens… or if they win too big and trouble follows them… it might not payout in the end.
Is it still right to tell this friend to keep engaging in this activity? Maybe in this case it’s still not clear.
What is the activity is abusing drugs or living a promiscuous lifestyle? Can you with a clear conscience tell them to keep engaging? It becomes increasingly difficult to justify that as a truly loving act. Sin is destructive. Its leads to unhappiness. That is its nature. Even we, in our transient temporal lives, can see how certain acts, however enjoyable in the moment, which have detrimental long term affects, are not things we want for those we love. Now if we as transient temporal beings can see this in our own lives and in the lives of those we love, how much more so do they appear to God with is eternal perspective?
He sees things from the looooong term view. Literally he is looking out for our eternal well being. What we consider small things, might be like the gambler or drug addict who is is just enjoying life, but with a love of truth we look for the reality of our situation and the true consequences of what we do. When we begin to adopt this view we will start to appreciate better the law and the prophets.
Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man, nor the children of men; neither Adam, your father, whom I created.
Doctrine and Covenants 29:34
This is why more than anything an understanding of Truth with the capital “T”, is the most critical component of understanding the law and the prophets. It is this core aspect if divinity that forms the foundation of how God acts out His love for us.
Conclusion
There are many other traits of God that we could explore to help us understand why the commandments are the way they are. Each would bring us closer to arriving at the commandments that we now operate under. We could explore God’s purity. We could discuss how seeking to exemplify humility would be a pin conceptualizing the commandments. Each of these would provide powerful insight into God and his relationship with us. They would help us know who he is and why he interacts with us the way he does. All of these are wonderful, but each loses their significance and power if not enacted according to the truth. Even love fails if that love does not encourage others to live according to the principles of true and lasting happiness.
You might have noticed that there is a glaring hole in my (hopefully) neat explanation of where the commandments come from. It is that to really reverse engineer the commandments you would need to understand enough about truth.
This could be the time to say, “let’s throw in the towel,” “We don’t the truth well enough to reverse engineer the commandments,” or “Good luck with that.” I however assert that we know enough. How in the world can we as mortals understand enough to figure out why God gives the commandments he does.
There are a few reasons that I could give, one is that I don’t believe Jesus’s words to the scribe that day were just of abstract intellectual worth. Jesus was not just settling an erudite dispute; he was teaching us something extremely valuable. If the question of which was the greatest commandment was not of great worth and of practical value I doubt Christ would have given a very concise and reasoned answer. Not only did he have an answer ready, but he also gave additional information outside of the specific answer that he had been asked. Not only that, but this incident was recorded by multiple of the Gospel writers. We just have to have faith that God will provide the understanding necessary to take full advantage of it.
There is greater reason for faith in this regard as well. In modern day revelation we have the words Christ spoke to the suffering prophet Jesus Smith during his time in Liberty Jail. We often focus on the beginning and the end of section 121. It starts with the pleading words of the prophet, “Oh God, where art thou?” and it end with the answer of God including the words about righteous priesthood leadership. But sandwiched between these are sections about the ultimate futility of the church’s antagonists, the punishments awaiting the wicked, but also promises about God’s intended revelations for the latter days.
God shall give unto you knowledge by his Holy Spirit, yea, by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, that has not been revealed since the world was until now; Which our forefathers have awaited with anxious expectation to be revealed in the last times, which their minds were pointed to by the angels, as held in reserve for the fulness of their glory;
A time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest. All thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, shall be revealed and set forth upon all who have endured valiantly for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Doctrine and Covenants 121:26-29
The promised understanding doesn’t stop there, but I’ll leave it to you to read the rest.
I believe that we live in those times. I believe that with the understanding from ages past combined with the scientific knowledge discovered by inspired and diligent men and women, we can understand the mysteries of heaven and earth. It is only by understanding these things that we can understand and implement celestial law among us. This is what drives my philosophy. These are the subjects that I will be addressing on this blog. Whether it is discussed as psychology, theology, or narratology. To me, it’s all the principles of Zion.
But in all of this let’s not forget that it’s all very simple:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Matthew 22:37-40
Leave a Reply