Matthew 22:35-36   "Then one of them, who was a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." 

This was the last question put to our Lord Jesus Christ by His enemies, the religious rulers, when they asked Him which was the greatest commandment. And we are told that after He answered this question, they never came to Him again with another question.

While this is the first time our Lord answered the question like this, it is not the first time He made this declaration. This momentous thesis was declared before by our Lord when another lawyer came to Him, testing Him concerning the greatest commandment. It was at that time that our Lord gave to him the wonderful parable of the Good Samaritan:

"And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tested him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou? And he, answering, said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself" (Luke 10:25–27).

It appears that there was a feeling among the religious rulers of that day that this was the greatest commandment.

"And He (Jesus) said unto him, Thou hast answered right; this do, and thou shalt live" (Luke 10:28).

Our  Lord, during His entire ministry, had set before them the fact that this was the greatest commandment.

There are two facts of great consequence in the answer our Lord gave, which are self-evident here.

The first one is that our Lord Jesus did not go to the Ten Commandments to get the greatest commandment.

Rather,

He went to the passage in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 where we find the greatest doctrinal statement in the Old Testament:

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."

This is the commandment that our Lord Jesus said was the greatest.

Why didn’t He go to the Ten Commandments?

He might have taken the first commandment,

 "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,"

 but He did not go there.

And there are a great many people today who think that He should have taken the commandment of the Sabbath day and made it the greatest, but He did not do that.

The very interesting thing is that He went to the Book of Deuteronomy and lifted out a commandment that is not even connected with the Ten Commandments at all.

And it is quite interesting that our Lord Jesus Christ whom we love so much seemed to have quoted from Deuteronomy more than from any other book in the Scriptures. It was the Book He quoted from twice in the three answers He gave to Satan during His temptation, (Matt. 4:1–11).

And it is also interesting that this is the first book of the Bible to be attacked by the higher critics.

The Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis struck at Deuteronomy. It didn’t strike at Daniel or any other book of the Bible, but its onslaught was against Deuteronomy.

We can see Satan’s hatred of this book, the book to which our Lord Jesus  turned to rebuke him. Since our Lord Jesus gave a great deal of importance to Deuteronomy, I believe we should be giving it a great deal more attention than we do today.

Our Lord went to Deuteronomy, which was given at the end of the wilderness march. He didn’t quote from that which was at the beginning but from that which was at the end. And in the Book of Deuteronomy, you find that the Law had been tested in the crucible of forty years of experience in the wilderness, and it is poured out of the test tube of this rugged experience. Now our Lord comes up with His answer to the question by saying that here is the greatest commandment:

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

There is another thing we should notice which is introductory. On both occasions when our Lord Jesus Christ spoke of the greatest commandment, He didn’t stop with only one; He spoke of two, and He always put these together.

First,  "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,"  and then

second, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

So here are the first and second commandments which our Lord Jesus Christ gave in the order of their importance. And we find in 1 John, our relationships today are like a triangle. God is at the top, we are on one side, and our neighbor is on the other.

It is a love relationship with God and a love relationship with His children.

First apostle John makes clear that Christ is talking about God’s children.

Love in the Old Testament.

The love for God and the love for the neighbor are both found in the Book of Deuteronomy.

This book is not a repetition of Exodus or Leviticus. It does not merely state the Law a second time. In Exodus and Leviticus, we have the emphasis on the Law. But in the Book of Deuteronomy, the emphasis is on love.

It may seem strange that the emphasis there is upon love, but the strangest thing of all is that it took God a long time to tell anybody that He loved them. In reading through Genesis, we do not find Him telling anybody He loves them. Neither will we find it in Exodus.

In Leviticus and Numbers, He still does not tell anybody He loves them.

However, the Book of Deuteronomy, the book that came out after the wilderness experience, when a new generation is entering the promised land.

God saids to this new generation,

 "I want you to know something if you have not yet discovered it so far - I love mankind!"

God had demonstrated it, but He had not said it.

In Deuteronomy 4:37, we find one of the most wonderful statements:

"And because He loved thy fathers, therefore He chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in His sight with His mighty power out of Egypt."

That is a glorious, wonderful truth.

At the end of the wilderness journey, after they had endured many rugged experiences, there might have been a question in the mind of some of the new generation,

Does God really love us?

They had heard their parents say again and again, "We just don’t believe that God really wants to bring us into the land. We don’t believe He is interested in us."

God says to the new generation,

"Look back upon your fathers and see how I dealt with them. I loved them. My love for them explains the reason I dealt with them as I did, and you will see that My mercy was extended to them again and again. It was an evidence of My love for them."

In Exodus and Leviticus, we find that the emphasis is on Law, but even in that there is the mercy and love of God. In Exodus 20:6, which is in the Ten Commandments, we read,

"And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments."

And in Leviticus 19:18 we read,

"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord."

We see love in Exodus and Leviticus in a minor note, but it becomes a major note when we get to the Book of Deuteronomy, where we find a law for love:

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deuteronomy 6:5).

And in the seventh chapter, we find it again:

The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people. But because the Lord loved you…" Deuteronomy 6:7-8).

And once God started telling them how much He loved them, He did not let up. He just kept right on telling them that He loved them.

May I say that God’s love for us is the wonder of wonders, something that we take for granted today, but it was glorious truth in that day.

Therefore we find in the Book of Deuteronomy the great principle of the gospel set down for us, "For God so loved the world."

In Deuteronomy God says,

"I have done this for you because I love you."

And today God says to the world

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

Today, all conservative groups start off in harmony. But the trouble is that they do not finish in harmony. Both those who are called "covenant theologians" and those who are "dispensational theologians" agree that there is a bifurcation between law and grace. Both groups make a correct division and distinction at this point.

"For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).

But I want you to notice something that I feel neither group is emphasizing as they should - and I know that I have not always emphasized it, but this message gives me an opportunity.

Our Lord came to fulfill the Law, not to destroy it. He made that clear in

Matthew 5:17   "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."

Notice how He did that.

In His life, He kept all the Commandments.

He kept the Law, and up to today He is the only Person who ever lived that has kept the Commandments  -  

unless you think you have kept them,

and I may be wrong but I don’t think you have.

No other person has ever kept them.

Only of Christ has God been able to say,

"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17).

He hasn’t said that about me, and He hasn’t said it about you, but He did say it about Christ Jesus. In His life, the Lord Jesus kept all the commandments of God and that which expresses the will of God. In His death He kept the ordinances and the testimonies and the sacrifices. He fulfilled the Law in all of its departments, in its many ramifications.

In its minutest details, our Lord kept the Law.

The great principle of law is love.

I think we forget that today. We like to think of the Old Testament as being a little harsh and that God in the Old Testament is a little severe.

He is not.

He is the God of love, the God of love in the Old Testament as well as the God of law.

The great principle of law is always love.

God did not give law to hurt mankind.

"His commandments,"

says the apostle John

"are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3).

God’s laws are not made by dumbbells in the legislature.

These come from very God,  and they are for the weal and welfare of mankind.

God gives us His great principle of the Mosaic Law, which is love, and we express our love by obedience.

It must always be so. Will you notice what He says in Deuteronomy 7:9:

"Know, therefore, that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God, who keepeth covenant and mercy with them who love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations."

Now the great principle of the gospel is expressed here in Deuteronomy, and it is expressed in love.

And again notice these expressions, beginning with Deuteronomy 4:37:

"And because He loved thy fathers, therefore He chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in His sight with His mighty power out of Egypt."

God did that because of love.

And here in chapter 6, verse 5:

"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."

And then we find that Paul mentions this great principle in his Epistle to the Galatians 5:14

"For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Now having made a statement like this, someone asks,

"How then is the gospel new if we define the principle of it as being back under law? If you have love in the Old Testament, what’s new about love in the New Testament?"

Let us therefore look at that particular problem.

Love Extended.

First of all, the love of God has been translated into history by the Incarnation—the birth, the death and the resurrection of Christ - so that apostle Paul could write in

Romans 5:8   "But God commendeth His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

That is the way God reveals His love today, and there is a vast difference. It is one thing to express love by bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt, and it’s another thing to die for mankind. It is one thing to come down to the top of Mount Sinai and give commandments; it is quite another got Him to come down and take upon Himself human flesh in order to suffer with mankind, to bleed and to die. That is genuine love, my dear reader.

May I say that long after the giving of the Law, in the present hour in which we live, God has already extended and revealed His love to us as He never did in the Old Testament.

So today salvation is a love story.

It is not a cold-blooded business transaction - Our Lord Jesus shed His blood, for us that He might bring us to God. He did shed His blood,  why did He do it? He did it because He loved us.

Salvation is a love affair.

One of the last books written in the New Testament was the First Epistle of John. 

Here apostle John gathers all this together and says,

"We love Him, because He first loved us"(4:19).

Now that is salvation - we love Him because He first loved us.

And John makes clear what he means when he says He loved us:

1 John 4:10   "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

He gave His Son to die for us!

The cross is the place God manifested His love.

And because He did that, we are able to love Him.

There is a grand canyon between the Law and where we stand today.

We have been given the principle of the gospel in Deuteronomy, but we do not have the gospel. It is not until we come to the One who left heaven’s glory, came to this earth and demonstrated it.

It is an historic fact that Jesus died,

He was buried, He rose again the 3rd day.

That is how God extended and expressed His love to mankind.

Love Defined.

Love for God in the Old Testament is not definitive. It was expressed only in obedience.

 God said to the children of Israel,

"If you love Me you will obey Me."

Now when we come to the New Testament it is spelled out for us.

What do we mean by love?

In John 13:34 -35 we are given an adequate and fully delineated definition of love by our Lord:

"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another…"

A New Commandment

I give unto you,

That ye love one another as I have loved you,

That you love one another as I have loved you.

By this shall all men know that you are my disciples,

If you have love one for another,

By this shall all men know that you are my disciples,

If you have love one for another.

Special Thanks:  Losinda.

I suppose Simon Peter, if the Lord had stopped there, could have said,

"That’s old stuff - we read that in Deuteronomy."

But our Lord kept on going:

"As I have loved you, that ye also love one another."

That’s the standard of love;

that is the norm for today,

the badge and fraternity pin of those who are belong to Christ, His own.

That is the test we have to all take.

"In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother" (1 John 3:10).

O today let us truly examine ourselves to see if we are indeed in the faith of our Lord Christ Jesus.

"For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:17-20).

The kind of love that He had for us is the love that the believer is to manifest,

and anything short of that is not Christian love.

It may be something else, but it is not Christian love.

And our Lod Jesus went on to say,

"By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.

I wish Christ had said that if I’m a premillennialist and a pretribulationist everybody would know I belong to him but He did not say that.

He said,

"If you do not manifest My love how will anyone know  that you do indeed belong to Me."

Will you read that again?

Our Lord Jesus said, in John 15:12,

"This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you."

God does not save us today by our keeping any of His commandments, and the reason is He now has a much higher standard than the Ten Commandments, and He never saves anyone based on what that person does. He saves the one who believes that God has done something - that God has Himself paid the penalty for our sins. God saves that person.

And after He saves that person, He says,

"Now I want to talk to you about what you are to do."

Dear reader if you are not a Christian, He is not talking to you at this point.

But to the believer God says,

"Now if you belong to Me, this is My commandment, you are to love other believers in Me as I have loved you."

And if we miss it He gives it to us again in verse 12, and He repeats it again in verse 10:

"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love."

Then in Verse 14:

 "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatever I command you."

Then in Verse 17:

"These things I command you, that ye love one another."

Now that’s spelling it out, is it not?

And, as far as the New Testament is concerned, that doesn’t end it.

Turning to 1 Corinthians 13, we find the finest statement on love that has ever been penned, and this is from a very fine translation, the Amplified New Testament:

If I [can] speak in the tongues of men and [even] of angels, but have not love… I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers—that is, the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose; and understand all the secret truths and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and if I have [sufficient] faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love [God’s love in me] I am nothing—a useless nobody" " (1 Corinthians 13:1-2).

The word "love" here is agape in the Greek.

There are three Greek words that are translated by our English word love. One is eros, which is never found in the New Testament. We get our word "erotic" from it. If you want the best translation, it is the English word sex. That is what the Greeks meant when they used the word eros. I do not think it should ever be translated by our word "love."

The New Testament never uses it.

Then there is the word phileo, which means "friendship." Now there are Greek scholars today who will not make a distinction between phileo and agape,

but the New Testament makes the distinction between phileo, which means friendship, and agape, which is love as only God can give it.

Now agape is the word in 1 Corinthians 13.

I’m not going to go into all of the ramifications here, but this is the most marvelous definition of what love really is. If we want to know whether we are manifesting love, then let us read 1 Corinthians 13.

Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy; is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited—arrogant and inflated with pride; it is not rude [unmannerly], and does not act unbecomingly. Love… does not insist on its own rights or its own way… Love never fails—never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end" (verses 4, 5, 8).

Apostle Paul concluded by saying,

"And so faith, hope, love abide… but the greatest of these is love."

The greatest of these three is love.

Faith looks to the past, hope looks to the future, but love is for the present and it is for eternity.

The thing which will characterize heaven is love.

It is what Paul meant when he said in Galatians 6:2,

"Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

Love is not defined in the Old Testament, but it is spelled out for us in the New Testament by the Incarnation of the Son of God. It is the love that He had when He left heaven’s glory and came to this earth. Anything short of that is not Christian love.

It may even be mistaken for fellowship.

Rotary Clubs  like to emphasize fellowship, and that’s good.

But unfortunately a great many people in the church think fellowship is all that Christian love is - just a pat on the back, a church dinner, but that is not fellowship with God, and that is not Christian love.

True love for a person means that we are concerned about their eternal welfare and we make it our aim to get the Word of God to them

"  ...   be ye reconciled to God."

"Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:20-21).

This is a tremendous thing our Lord says to us.

Love Empowered!

We come now to the third way in which love was a new commandment. There was no power to express and realize the love of God in the Old Testament. None whatever.

As best I can tell,

God said,

"This is it, I’ve put it on the line. You either do it or you don’t do it. And if you don’t do it, I’ll punish you. If you do it, I’ll bless you."

Well, they did not do it.

And the consequences?

 Look at the history of the Jewish people for the past 3,000 years. An example is their treatment by Hitler, who had some six million Jews killed. But if they could have kept God’s Law, not one hand would ever have been put on them.

They are a witness to the world that we cannot please God by doing something.

They tried it, and they had ideal conditions for it - which we don’t have.

God today is saying to mankind,

"You have not met My standard, but I am prepared to reach down and lift you up."

That is the reason He sent Christ into the world.

And now He says that those who have come to Him and are truly born-again children of God are to express that same kind of love and He says

"I’ll give you the power for it today - the fruit of the Spirit is love."

Now after that, there are other fruits that apparently stem from love, because the language, the grammar, is quite exact. The fruit of the Spirit is not our love, joy, peace, et cetera, but it is His love working through us.

The one fruit is love, and out of love comes "joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control…" (Galatians 5:22-23).

This is what is produced, not by our own effort but by the indwelling Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.

God says the child of God cannot measure up to His standard at all.

It is beyond human ability and effort.

The Holy Spirit was not given in the Old Testament to enable them to realize the ideal that was expressed in the Law. Today it is expressed by the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer.

Apostle Paul could say in Romans 7:18,

"To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not."

In other words, apostle Paul says,

"I have a new nature and I want to please Him, I want to love God with all my heart, my soul, my mind, but I fail. I want to love others, but I don’t.

"The will is present with me, but how to perform it, I find not."

Then that man who was so defeated in chapter 7 of Romans says in chapter 8

that what he could not do through the flesh,

the Holy Spirit has now been able to do.

And we find him writing to the Philippians (4:13). at the end of his life,

"I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me."

So today God has given a power to believers that enables them to realize this ideal.

We today declare our historic doctrine of the faith in clear and clarion tones, and we should, but are we manifesting before the world the love that our Lord commanded? We are vocal about our high calling, but there is a lack of conviction and courage for that which is right.

Many, many today are adopting the liberal’s definition of love, which is the sloppiest thing. It just slops over on every side with just talk about loving everybody -

"love, love, love."

and what that means is to be a weak sissy - not to stand for the truth but rather to tell a lie - worse than that live a lie.

We today need a strong love, the kind our Lord Jesus had when He denounced the Pharisees - "You are hypocrites," but then go to the cross and say, "Father, forgive them."

They were forgiven for the crucifixion of the Son of God, otherwise that would have been an unpardonable sin.

Afterward many of them were converted, including Saul of Tarsus, who was present at the Crucifixion. But sadly today the country club exhibits more courtesy than the community church.

Present-day churches have more doctrine and less love, more turmoil and less theology.

I am now thinking of the story told many years ago.

In a little town back in Arkansas a man drove in to a filling station up on a hill right at the edge of town. It was a Sunday morning about eleven o’clock. When the driver got out of his car, he could hear church bells ringing. He began to look over the town and counted seventeen steeples there. As the manager began to fill up the car with gas, his customer looked around and said, "My, everybody in this town must love God!" The manager, an agnostic, said, "I don’t know about that, but I do know this: they hate each other."

 Homer Rodeheaver concluded by saying that the last he heard, that manager was still an agnostic.

Of course he was!

My beloved, our churches today need something to go with their doctrine:

"By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35).

Does the world today see that you and I love others as Christ loves them?

Are you sad when you see people all around you going into a lost eternity?

Do we rather tell them lies to make them feel good about themselves instead of making then face up to the truth?

Christ s the truth and in Him there can be no lie, ever.

When He comes to this earth again He will come as the Judge of all the earth.

Do we truly love Him with all our hearts today?

Our Lord Jesus tells us plainly,

"If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever -  the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you" (John 14:15-17).

"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from Him, That he who loves God loves his brother also" ( 1John 4:20-21).

Whoever receiveth the crucified One,
Whoever believeth on God's only Son,
A free and a perfect salvation shall have;
For He is abundantly able to save.

Refrain:
My brother, the Master is calling for thee;
His grace and His mercy are wondrously free;
His blood as a ransom for sinners He gave,
And He is abundantly able to save.

Whoever receiveth the message of God,
And trusts in the pow'r of the soul cleansing blood,
A full and eternal redemption shall have:
For He is both able and willing to save.

Whoever repents and forsakes ev'ry sin,
And opens his heart for the Lord to come in,
A present and perfect salvation shall have:
For Jesus is ready this moment to

Father we Thank You for Your servant Elisha Hoffman and Philip Bliss for this hymn for it has for many, many years blessed the hearts of Your dear children.

Till You come Lord Jesus!

I love you, Lord
And I lift my voice
To worship You
Oh, my soul rejoice!
Take joy my King
In what You hear
Let it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear

Hallelujah!

Amen!

THIS PAGE UPDATED: 8-1-2011