CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 12:28. The scribe’s question was—Of what nature is the first commandment of all? Has it to do, that is, with Sabbath observance, or with circumcision, or with sacrificial rites—or what?
Mark 12:30. Note the prep. ἐξ, before “heart,” “soul,” “mind,” “strength.” The whole of man’s complex being is to go out in love to God. “The measure of our love to God is to love Him without measure.”
Mark 12:32. Finely (answered)! Teacher, Thou hast spoken from (the standpoint of) truth, for He is one, etc. This seems to suit both text and context better than R. V. rendering.
Mark 12:34. Discreetly.—With νοῦς or discernment—“having his wits about him,” as we say.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 12:28-34
(PARALLEL: Matthew 22:34-40.)
Christ’s interview with a scribe.—The character of the scribes and Pharisees, as a body, is held up by our Lord to the abhorrence of all who would serve God in spirit and in truth. See Matthew 16:6-12; Matthew 23:1-36. But experience teaches that no general description of a class of men, however just, is applicable to every individual in it. We are not, therefore, surprised to find here a notable exception to the rule—a scribe who entertains such worthy notions of religion as to win the commendation of Christ.
I. The occasion.—The Pharisees and the Sadducees had, one after another, put questions to our Lord, for the purpose of catching or ensnaring Him in His talk. He, seeing through their hypocrisy, gave them such answers as neither satisfied them nor afforded them a handle to use against Him. Then one of the scribes, struck with the appositeness of His replies, determined to put a question of his own, to try whether He who had so properly silenced the crafty and malicious would be as ready with a suitable answer to an honest and serious inquirer.
II. The scribe’s question.—“Which is the first commandment of all?”
1. If his object was to test the merits and attainments of this new Teacher, and to see whether He had a correct notion of that law which He professed to expound, he could not have put a more appropriate question. It would be a parallel case if, in the present day, a professing Christian were to be called upon to state which is the greatest and most distinguishing doctrine of Christianity, or its most excellent privilege. Those persons who are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,” would either be unable to answer at all, or would answer in such a way as to prove that they were destitute of any clear and comprehensive views of Divine truth.
2. This question was one very frequently discussed in the schools of the Rabbis; and from many of them it received answers very wide of the mark. Some said the commandment relating to the Sabbath was the greatest of all; others set the highest value on the laws relating to sacrifices, or to purifications. This scribe appears to have come to a sounder conclusion, and to have been anxious to discover whether this new Teacher would confirm him in it.
III. Our Lord’s reply.—This question being honestly put, Christ meets it in a very different manner from that in which He had silenced His enemies. Without hesitation, and without ambiguity, the Oracle of Divine truth delivers His infallible sentence.
1. Whereas the question referred to one commandment only, our Lord in His reply brings forward two. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” He says, is the first commandment. But the mention of a first naturally suggests a second, without which the first might appear incomplete. It is true that the love of God, if perfect and sincere, will constrain us, by a moral necessity, to love our brother also. Still, in a matter of so much practical importance, it is desirable that there should be no room for cavil or mistake. Therefore He proceeds: “And the second is like,” etc.
2. “There is none other commandment greater than these.”
(1) In comprehensiveness. Whatever commandments may be added to these, can they require of us anything greater than is already required by these?
(2) In fundamental importance (Matthew 22:40). These are the two great principles upon which all statutes, ordinances, and judgments, which can be given or conceived, are based. Take away the obligation of these two, and it will be impossible to maintain the authority of any others.
IV. The scribe’s remark upon Christ’s answer.—
1. His language is that of a man who, having long considered the subject, and come to a conclusion not generally accredited among those of his own set, at last meets with one whose opinion agrees with his own.
2. In declaring his conviction that the observance of these two commandments “is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices,” he does not mean to imply that burnt offerings and sacrifices are nothing. To him, as a Jew, they were much. They were that wherewith man should “come before the Lord, and bow himself before the high God”; they were the suitable recognitions of the Divine bounty; and, what is still more to the purpose, they were the means appointed by God Himself for the acknowledgment and atonement of sin. What, therefore, though God had declared that “to obey is better than sacrifice,” since He had also declared that sacrifice was necessary to supply the deficiencies of obedience, and thus it became, in fact, a part of obedience! It was not for a Jew to ask how the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sin, or how that Great Being who owned “every beast of the forest and the cattle upon a thousand hills” should condescend to accept a bullock out of his house or a he-goat out of his folds. It was enough for him to know that God in His wisdom had provided for the continuance of these things till He came into the world who should provide a real sacrifice for sin, and by one offering perfect for ever them that are sanctified.
V. Christ’s commendation of the scribe.—Here is—
1. An approbation of the scribe’s remark. It was a “discreet” answer, i.e. moderate and judicious. If, in his admiration of inward and spiritual religion, he had spoken contemptuously of forms and ceremonies, we should have said his meaning was good, but his language indiscreet. As it was, however, he hit the happy mean of exalting the one without degrading the other. He shewed no disposition to disparage the most literal compliance with every jot and tittle of the ceremonial law; he was only anxious that the body and the spirit, the form and the substance of religion, should be estimated in their proper order—first purity of heart, and then scrupulousness of obedience. This was exactly in accordance with Christ’s own teaching (Matthew 23:23).
2. A commendation of the individual himself. “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God,” i.e. thou art in a favourable state of mind for embracing the gospel.
(1) The honesty of intention which distinguished this scribe was a very important qualification for his reception of the truth.
(2) His spiritual conception of religion was an even more valuable preparation. A Jew thus enlightened had, to a certain extent, forestalled the gospel; he would find most congenial to his mind those very sayings of Christ which to others were the hardest of all (Matthew 9:13; Matthew 12:7; Mark 2:27; Mark 7:15-23; John 4:21; John 4:23).
Love to God and one’s neighbour.—
I. The nature and properties of love.—
1. It is a passion of the soul, that inclines it to unite to the thing beloved.
2. Its properties are chiefly these two:
(1) A desire to please, and
(2) A desire to enjoy.
II. The double object of love.—
1. The first and great object of our love is God.
(1) He is “the Lord”; and so His power and sovereignty may command our affections.
(2) He is “our God,” in covenant and relation to us; and so His kindness and nearness to us may engage us to love Him.
2. The other object of our love is our neighbour. He is to be loved by us—
(1) Chiefly for God’s sake, whose creature, child, and servant he is (1 John 4:20-21).
(2) For our own sake, because he has the same nature as ourselves (Proverbs 22:2).
III. In what measure these two are to be loved.—
1. The loving of God with all the heart, etc., denotes both the sincerity and integrity of our love to Him.
(1) The sincerity is signified by its being from the heart; what springs from thence is commonly sound and sincere.
(2) “With all thy heart,” etc., denotes the integrity. God will admit of no rival with Him in our affections. Though He loves a broken He hates a divided heart.
2. “Thy neighbour as thyself”—that is, with a like though not always with an equal affection; for every one being nearest to himself may be allowed, first, to consult his own welfare. Charity begins at home, though it must not end there, but must extend to all that are round about us, making our own desires the measure and standard of our dealing with others, doing all that good to others which we would have done to us, and avoiding all that evil to any which we ourselves would be unwilling to bear.—M. Hole, D.D.
Christ’s first and second commandments.—
I. How is the love of God said to be the first commandment?—
1. It is so in order of time, the love of God being the first thing to be taught and learnt of all that come to Him; for all true religion begins with it and is founded upon it: it is the first step we are to make towards our Maker, and that will lead us on to all the other parts of our duty and obedience to Him.
2. It is the first in order of nature, as being the root and spring of all other virtues. He that truly loves God will fear Him above all things, will trust Him in all conditions, will honour Him in all his actions, will worship Him at all times, and in a word will serve and depend upon Him in the whole course of his life.
II. How is the loving our neighbour the second and like unto the first commandment?—
1. In respect of the authority that commands it, and our obligation to observe it, which is the same in both.
2. In respect of the ground and motive of our obedience, which are some Divine perfections residing in God and communicated to His creatures. Our love to man is grounded upon the love of God; and we depart not from the love of our Maker by loving our neighbour, but rather heighten and increase it; for it is for God’s sake, and on His account, that we pay this affection to His creature.
3. In respect of the extent and comprehensiveness of it; for as the love of God includes the whole of that duty and homage we owe unto Him, so the love of our neighbour comprises all the good offices we are to pay unto him.
4. In respect of the reward and punishment that attend the keeping and breaking of it, which is the same in both. See Matthew 25:31-46.—Ibid.
Completeness of character in serving God.—Jesus took this questioner back to the familiar beginning of things—to a well-worn platitude of the Jewish system—and, leading this man to old and familiar ground, made him work the old machinery with a new leverage, as the life of Christ fulfilled the old command, and lighted up the letter of the Mosaic economy with the spirit of the new-found Christian faith.
I. By loving God with all our heart we mean the placing of our affections upon Him. By the heart we mean love, emotion, the vitality of the tender, responsive, emotional side of our being. But you say, “How can I love God, for I have never seen Him?” A mother who had lost an only child in her brooding grief adopted an unknown child in a foreign mission school. The Arab boy was at first an unknown quantity to her. She assumed that the child was and the child became in time real to her. Not her reason but her affections were set upon the child who took the place of her own lost one. She loved him with all her poor broken heart, and by-and-by they met, each having saved the other. In the same way, dear friends, you must assume that God is, until He becomes real to you. You must love Him who is unknown, in the light of all His righteousness, until He becomes known to you. Your affections must grow towards God; they must lead the way to Him, for the rest of our nature always follows the leading of the heart.
II. By loving God with all the soul we mean giving to God and His service that which is the very essence of a being, the internal, animating principle of our lives. What we mean by soul is that essence or spirit within us which is regardless of matter. The power of the soul is a very different quality from the power of the heart. We may defend a cause or a person, or throw our lives into a certain current, because the soul compels us to that course of action, regardless of the heart. The power of the heart is in idealising another. The power of the soul is in idealising some hidden strength within ourselves. You love your darling child with all your heart. You love the cause you have at heart with all your soul. This is what is meant by soul—it is the rising above all the hindrances and limitations of our physical and material nature. Brethren, that is the kind of strength in us which God wants. It is that which we ought to give to Him, and which is always a great and commanding power when we find it ruling a strong character in the religious life.
III. By loving God with all the mind we mean putting into exercise our reasoning faculties with regard to Him. God can never be real to you unless you have real and definite thoughts with reference to Him. Begin with the fact of Jesus Christ, study out the meaning of the Christian Church, take in the grasp of the religious instincts and the moral faculties, study out God in history, believe in a definite Holy Ghost, and you will find that the mind will grow by what it feeds on, and that God will be a reality to your mind, when your mind has a real grasp upon God.
IV. By loving God with all our strength is meant the co-ordination of our powers and faculties in such a way as to shew the force of our character, the energy of our entire nature, the putting of our energies into exercise, and the command of our own personality over our mere circumstances and surroundings. We mean by the exercise of all our powers, through the unit of the individual will, what Frederick the Great meant when speaking of William Pitt. He said, “England has been a long time in labour, but she has at last brought forth a man.” In the same way heart and soul and mind, when they become united with a definite will and purpose, produce that strength which shews itself in action—that belief which becomes a living force when it is translated into a life! How is it, then, that this wholeness of service ensures us against restlessness and unbelief and sin? The answer is very plain. Do you not see that if you have this much of the bulk of your nature on the side of the service of God, if God is real enough to you to claim a real and honest portion of your nature in every department—in heart, in soul, in mind, and in strength—there will be no trouble either in your belief in Him or in your service for Him? You will have exalted the spiritual side of your nature over the tyrannous rule of the body with its material demands, and you will be living upward to God instead of downward towards self; and the Being who had claimed and has received your affection, your soul, your mind, and your concentrated force of living will give you as a reward those returns of a spiritual life which grow to great results in cur life in exact proportion to our daily practice.—W. W. Newton.
Mark 12:34. Obedience to God the way to faith in Christ.—In these words we are taught, first, that the Christian’s faith and obedience are not the same religion as that of natural conscience, as being some way beyond it; secondly, that this way is “not far”—not far in the case of those who try to act up to their conscience; in other words, that obedience to conscience leads to obedience to the gospel, which, instead of being something different altogether, is but the completion and perfection of that religion which natural conscience teaches. Indeed, it would have been strange if the God of nature had said one thing and the God of grace another, if the truths which our conscience taught us without the information of Scripture were contradicted by that information when obtained. But it is not so; there are not two ways of pleasing God; what conscience suggests Christ has sanctioned and explained; to love God and our neighbour are the great duties of the gospel as well as of the law; he who endeavours to fulfil them by the light of nature is in the way towards, is, as our Lord said, “not far from Christ’s kingdom”; for to him that hath more shall be given.
I. Consider how plainly we are taught in Scripture that perfect obedience is the standard of gospel holiness.— Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 7:19; Philippians 4:8; James 2:10; 2 Peter 1:5-7; John 14:21; Matthew 5:19. These texts, and a multitude of others, shew that the gospel leaves us just where it found us, as regards the necessity of our obedience to God; that Christ has not obeyed instead of us, but that obedience is quite as imperative as if Christ had never come; nay, is pressed upon us with additional sanctions; the difference being, not that He relaxes the strict rule of keeping His commandments, but that He gives us spiritual aids, which we have not except through Him, to enable us to keep them. Accordingly Christ’s service is represented in Scripture, not as different from that religious obedience which conscience teaches us naturally, but as the perfection of it. We are told again and again that obedience to God leads on to faith in Christ, that it is the only recognised way to Christ, and that therefore to believe in Him ordinarily implies that we are living in obedience to God (John 6:45; John 3:21; John 7:17; John 15:23; John 8:19; 1 John 2:23; 2 John 1:9; 2 Corinthians 4:4).
II. If we look to the history of the first propagation of the gospel, we find this view confirmed.—The early Christian Church was principally composed of those who had long been in the habit of obeying their consciences carefully, and so preparing themselves for Christ’s religion, that kingdom of God from which the text says they were not far (Luke 1:6; Matthew 1:19; Luke 2:25; John 1:47; Luke 23:50; Acts 10:2; Acts 10:13; Acts 10:17). But it may be asked, “Did Christ hold out no hope for those who had lived in sin?” Doubtless He did, if they determined to forsake their sin. When sinners truly repent, then indeed they are altogether brothers in Christ’s kingdom with those who have not in the same sense “need of repentance”; but that they should repent at all is, alas! so far from being likely, that when the unexpected event takes place it causes such joy in heaven (from the marvellousness of it) as is not even excited by the ninety-and-nine just persons who need no such change of mind. Of such changes some instances are given us in the Gospels, for the encouragement of all penitents, such as that of the woman, mentioned by St. Luke, who “loved much.” And, moreover, of these penitents of whom I speak, and whom, when they become penitents, we cannot love too dearly (after our Saviour’s pattern), nay, or reverence too highly, and whom the apostles, after Christ’s departure, brought into the Church in such vast multitudes, none, as far as we know, had any sudden change of mind from bad to good wrought in them, nor do we hear of any of them honoured with any important station in the Church. I have confined myself to the time of Christ’s coming; but not only then, but at all times and under all circumstances, as all parts of the Bible inform us, obedience to the light we possess is the way to gain more light (Proverbs 8:17-20; Luke 16:10; Mark 4:25).
III. Some of the consequences which follow from this great Scripture truth.—
1. First, we see the hopelessness of waiting for any sudden change of heart, if we are at present living in sin. To all those who live a self-indulgent life, however they veil their self-indulgence from themselves by a notion of their superior religious knowledge, and by their faculty of speaking fluently in Scripture language, to all such the Word of life says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked”; He tries the heart, and disdains the mere worship of the lips. He acknowledges no man as a believer in His Son who does not anxiously struggle to obey His commandments to the utmost; to none of those who seek without striving, and who consider themselves safe, to none of these does He give “power to become sons of God.”
2. But, after all, there are very many more than I have as yet mentioned who wait for a time of repentance to come, while at present they live in sin. For instance, the young, who think it will be time enough to think of God when they grow old, that religion will then come as a matter of course, and that they will then like it naturally, just as they now like their follies and sins. Or those who are much engaged in worldly business, who confess they do not give that attention to religion which they ought to give, who neglect the ordinances of the Church, who allow themselves in various small transgressions of their conscience, and resolutely harden themselves against the remorse which such transgressions are calculated to cause them; and all this they do under the idea that at length a convenient season will come when they may give themselves to religious duties. All such persons do not, in their hearts, believe our Lord’s doctrine contained in the text, that to obey God is to be near Christ, and that to disobey is to be far from Him. How will this truth be plain to us in that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed! Now we do not believe that strict obedience is as necessary as it is. We put something before it, in our doctrinal system, as more necessary than it; one man puts faith, another outward devotion, a third attention to his temporal calling, another zeal for the Church—that is, we put a part for the whole of our duty, and so run the risk of losing our souls. These are the burnt offerings and sacrifices which even the scribe put aside before the weightier matters of the law. Or, again, we fancy that the means of gaining heaven are something stranger and rarer than the mere obvious duty of obedience to God: we are loath to seek Christ in the waters of Jordan rather than in Pharpar and Abana, rivers of Damascus; we prefer to seek Him in the height above, or to descend into the deep, rather than to believe that the Word is nigh us, even in our mouth and in our heart. Hence in false religions some men have even tortured themselves and been cruel to their flesh, thereby to become as gods, and to mount aloft; and in our own, with a not less melancholy, though less self-denying, error, men fancy that certain strange effects on their minds, strong emotion, restlessness, and an unmanly excitement and extravagance of thought and feeling, are the tokens of that inscrutable Spirit who is given us, not to make us something other than men, but to make us, what without His gracious aid we never shall be, upright, self-mastering men, humble and obedient children of our Lord and Saviour. In that day of trial all these deceits will be laid aside; we shall stand in our own real form, whether it be of heaven or of earth, the wedding garment or the old raiment of sin; and then how many, do we think, will be revealed as the heirs of light, who have followed Christ in His narrow way, and humbled themselves after His manner (though not in His perfection, and with nothing of His merit) to the daily duties of soberness, mercy, gentleness, self-denial, and the fear of God?—J. H. Newman, D.D.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 12:28-31. The scribe’s question, or catch, was a common one among the learned of that day; and this answer of Jesus was the recognised solution of it. Long before now another lawyer, when asked by Jesus, “What is written in the law? How dost thou read it?” had replied in similar terms (Luke 10:25-27). So that our Lord’s answer was not original, was not His private solution of the problem; it was the common and accepted solution among the students and masters of the law, as indeed this master himself confesses in the next verse. The only wonder to those who heard it from the lips of Jesus was how He came to know it, He who had “never learned,” never sat at the feet of any of their rabbis or passed through any of their schools. An ordinary layman would have been posed by it. For neither “the first and great commandment,” nor “the second, which is like unto it,” was contained in the Decalogue, though obedience to them was far “more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” The first, that which enjoins love to God, is only given incidentally, in a summary of human duty contained in Deuteronomy 6:5; and, again, Mark 10:12. The second, that which enjoins love for our neighbour, is hidden away among a crowd of Levitical enactments of the most minute and burdensome kind (Leviticus 19:18). It took some knowledge of the law, therefore, to find these two commandments at all; and much knowledge, much spiritual insight and a deep sympathy with the animating spirit of the Hebrew law, to discover that they were the first and best commandments of all. And it shews, I think, what a real genius for religion the Jews had, that even the hide-bound rabbis and scribes had discerned for themselves that love—love to God and man—is the end of the commandment and the fulfilling of the law. But, though they would have used the very words which Jesus used, would they have used them in the same sense? They would have selected—they had selected—the same two commandments as the great commandments; but did they see in them the meaning that He saw? We know they did not. To them this answer was only the right answer to a legal catch; to Him it was the supreme fact of human life. For what else had He come into the world but just this?—to induce men, by revealing God’s hearty love for them, to love Him with all their hearts, and their neighbours as themselves.—S. Cox, D.D.
Christ’s two commandments and the Decalogue.—Have the two commandments of Christ superseded the ten commandments of Moses? Yes and No: they abolish only by fulfilling them. So long as we are compassed about with infirmity, and come short therefore of the full height of the charity of love, it is very meet, right, and our bounden duty to bear in mind the commandments of the law, and to enforce ourselves to obey them. And yet, if we could but keep the two commandments, what need should we have of the ten, or of any other commandment? How can any man who loves God with all his heart have any other God besides Him? How can any man who loves God with the whole of his mind, with full and clear intelligence, make unto him any graven images, any idol, and bow down before it? How can any man who loves God with all his soul take the name of the Lord his God in vain? How can any man who loves God with all his strength forget to hallow every day to His service, and not only the seventh? Or how can any man who loves his neighbour as himself fail to honour all men, and not only his father and mother, or do any murder, or commit adultery, or steal, or bear false witness, or covet anything that is his neighbour’s? Within the compass of these two commandments the whole law does hang and move: love is the fulfilling of the law; and he that walketh in love both walks at large (i. e. in liberty) and keeps all the commandments of God.—Ibid.
True religion.—True religion can be no disjointed, fragmentary affair. As the forest tree is one tree, though it have a myriad branches and twigs and leaves, because it has one root, so the true religious life must be one because it can have but one root—supreme love to God.
2. True religion engages the whole man, mind and soul and affections, while the strength and power to carry out its behests are not wanting. The intellect and the emotions, the spiritual nature, and the will and force to make the Spirit effective are all drawn upon.
3. Philanthropy is not religion; but there can be no true religion without philanthropy. We love God whom we have not seen because we have learned to love our fellow-men whom we have seen, and our love to our fellow-men is intense and pure and active in proportion to the strength of our devotion to the Lord our God.
4. True religion is an active influence, leading us to do as well as think, to act as well as feel.
5. While true religion demands our all, it demands no more than any one can give. No experience that is beyond us is demanded. No angel’s love, no seraph’s might, not the devotion of the ripened saint unless his years and experience have been attained, but “with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.”—F. E. Clark.
Guidance in the religious life.—These words of Christ form a noble guide for the religious life. You are concerned with religion in many of its varied aspects. You are interested in thoughts about God and His relation to the world and man; you give expression to your spiritual aspirations in one and another form of worship; you bear your share of the Christian activity of the congregation; and you can never escape from the demands made upon you for Christian conduct. Forget not what religion according to Christ means. Take heed lest you be so engrossed with its mere accidents that you lose sight of its substance. Strive that you may grow in love to God and man. Despise not creeds and theologies, but so use creed, theology, and Bible that you may gain that deeper insight into God and God’s ways with men which will waken a deeper love. In recoil from a ritualism which sets more store by the means than by the end which is subserved by the means, do not rashly sit too loosely to forms of worship, but so use these forms that they may serve to bring you nearer God and nearer man. In the sphere of Christian duty beware of the letter which killeth, rise above mere obedience to external law, and ever seek in your relations with others to have a fresh baptism of that love by which alone the law of Christ can be fulfilled. And in the work you undertake in Christ’s Church on behalf of others be not content with their acceptance of a creed, with their participation in religious worship, or with the observance of the respectabilities of social life; strive to lead them into the love of God and man; and that you may be successful in that work grow yourself in that love, for love is begotten by love.—D. M. Ross.
Mark 12:29. The unity of God.—What a massive and reassuring thought! Amid the debasements of idolatry, with its deification of every impulse and every force, amid the distractions of chance and change, seemingly so capricious and even discordant, amid the complexities of the universe and its phenomena, there is wonderful strength and wisdom in the reflexion that God is one. All changes obey His hand which holds the rein; by Him the worlds were made. The exiled patriarch was overwhelmed by the majesty of the revelation that his fathers’ God was God in Bethel even as in Beersheba: it charmed away the bitter sense of isolation, it unsealed in him the fountains of worship and trust, and sent him forward with a new hope of protection and prosperity. The unity of God, really apprehended, is a basis for the human will to repose upon, and to become self-consistent and at peace. It was the parent of the fruitful doctrine of the unity of nature which underlies all the scientific victories of the modern world. In religion St. Paul felt that it implies the equal treatment of all the human race (Romans 3:29).—Dean Chadwick.
Mark 12:30. Loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength.—We know what love is in the relation of husband and wife, of father and children, of friend with friend; and from time to time any thoughtful Christian asks himself somewhat sadly, “Do I, with the same reality of love, love God?” If we would endeavour to get some answer to this question in regard to ourselves, let us examine carefully this passage.
1. To love God with all my heart means that I do deliberately direct my life consciously to God as its first end, and that not generally only, but in detail also. I seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness in the small ordinary transactions of life as well as in the great movements of my life.
2. The soul or life means the sum of the faculties. There is the life of a plant, which means the sum of its faculties—the power of absorbing moisture, developing the leaves, the flower, and the fruit. There is the life or soul of the animal; that is, in addition to its powers of assimilation, digestion, and reproduction—powers also of movement and expression of sound—there is the sum of faculties, which is the life of the animal. And there is the sum of the faculties which belong to man in addition to those which the animal shares—those rational powers which constitute the true life of humanity. In part those powers belong to all men; in part they are the peculiar endowment of special individuals, as each of us has from Almighty God his special gifts and powers. To love God, then, “with all our soul,” is to take stock of the faculties which God has given us, and deliberately as we realise what they are with increasing assurance as life goes on to direct them one by one and altogether to the service of God.
3. “To love the Lord our God with all our mind” is to direct our faculties of intellect to knowing what we can of God. Let us run through the various traits of the being of God which He has revealed to us. There is, first, His revelation in nature. It is a scene which, by captivating the spiritual imagination and faculties of man, discloses something of the mind and spiritual being of that God who is at work in it: power, wisdom, beauty; and not so only, for this scene is also a storehouse of truth. Everywhere God is appealing there to the mind of man, informing it, enlightening it. God is there disclosed in His power, in His beauty, in His truth. And yet we have but begun to estimate what we can know of God. There is that other great natural witness—the witness of conscience. So it is when man within himself becomes conscious of the altogether new work of self-revelation. God is disclosed in righteousness. And then, once more, there is the moral character remaining, which is the argument of the psalmist: “He that made the eye, shall He not see? He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?” And our great poet Robert Browning has taught men to argue—He that made love and righteousness the character of man, must not He in Himself be greater than this moral work? So it is with men. They look to human nature, and see in what is best in man once more the order of the uncreated God. And yet what a wild scene this human nature is! How are we to discriminate between what belongs to human nature, between love and cruelty, between justice and tyranny? How shall we know what here is proper to human nature, and what is but the corruption of it? At this point there comes in the rectifying disclosure which God has given of Himself in the humanity of our Lord. Jesus Christ, our Master, gives us the true standard of human nature. There we see what belongs to man, and what is only the corruption of the gift of God. And yet in Jesus Christ is not only the disclosure of perfect manhood—it is the disclosure, under the conditions of our humanity, of perfect Godhood. He in man is very God. We look at His life, His forbearance, His patience, His gentleness, His self-sacrifice, and we see nothing else than forbearance and patience and gentleness—very God. So it is with point after point. Gradually we sum up what we can know of God, His power, His beauty, His truth, His righteousness, His love, His self-sacrifice—that being of God which is summed up in St. John’s words: “God is love.” And yet one step more. In thus disclosing to us His character God has revealed to us something at least of His own being. We could not conceive of God at all in blank, monotonous solitude. We could not conceive of a personal God living in the enjoyment of spiritual life in monotonous solitude. There can be no life, no knowledge, no will, if there be no relationship, if there be no fellowship. But as God has come nearer to us in the person of His Son, He has disclosed to us something of those inner relationships which obtained eternally in His being—the relation of Father and Son and Holy Ghost.
4. With all our strength! What does that add to the other? This surely: that everything in human nature degenerates very rapidly into routine is an experience with which we are all only too unhappily familiar. Therefore to love the Lord our God with all our strength is again and again to make fresh beginnings in the love of God—again and again be as one who has not yet begun at all to learn the lesson of religion, so that new force of vitality may in each successive epoch of our life, in each successive morning of our life, be put into the service which we offer to God.—Canon Gore.
Love to God.—
1. The sentiments and actions wherein love to God is chiefly exhibited. It implies in general to regard Him from intimate conviction as our sovereign good, as the source of all our happiness; to delight more in Him than in all things else; to prize and covet His favour and fellowship above all things; and diligently to make it our business to be well pleasing to Him.
(1) Frequent meditation on God is the first particular by which the religious man evinces his love to the Supreme Being, and shews it to be operative in him.
(2) The delight with which the religious man attends on public as well as private worship is the second particular whereby his love to God appears and shews itself active.
(3) An enlightened and active zeal for the honour and glory of God is the third particular whereby the love towards God is manifested and effectively displayed.
(4) A constant and earnest endeavour to please God by a willing and unlimited obedience to His commands is the fourth particular whereby the love towards God is displayed and shewn to be effective. This, in fact, forms the most essential part of it.
(5) The love of God must manifest itself by a sincere and effective love of our neighbour. God is infinitely superior to all necessities. We cannot augment His perfection, or give Him anything which He has not first given us. But He has rational creatures who bear His likeness, He has children, He has friends and subjects here on earth, whom we may effectually serve, to whom we may be useful in various ways, whose temporal and eternal prosperity we may promote. These He recommends to our love, to our care, to our relief.
(6) Lastly, the love of God displays itself in sincere aspirations after heaven, where we shall be more intimately united with Him, and partake of His good pleasure in a superior degree.
2. How our love to God should be constituted, or what qualities it should possess, for being genuine. “With all thy heart, soul, mind, strength.” These accumulated expressions, which apparently denote the selfsame thing, serve generally to shew the sincerity no less than the force and degree of the love which we owe to God. They give us to understand an undissembled, an ardent, an effective, and a constant love, captivating as it were the entire soul, setting all its capacities and energies in motion, and becoming a ruling affection.
(1) It must be sincere.
(2) We must love God above or more than all things else.
(3) We must love all else that merits our esteem and affection, principally in regard and in reference to God as the author of it.
(4) Our love to God must be firm and immutable.
3. The reasons which oblige us to such a love towards God. Love is founded on the excellency of its object, or on the close relations wherein we stand towards it, or on the benefits which we receive from it, or on the good we have to hope for from it. In regard to our love for God all these reasons unite together; and who does not perceive how strong and indissoluble they render our obligation to it?
(1) Where is the being that is more excellent, more venerable, more amiable than God? Does He not comprise in Himself whatever is beautiful, good, perfect?
(2) Consider the close relation wherein you stand towards God, and the multitude, the greatness, the high value of the benefits you have received from Him. He is our Creator; we are the work of His hands. He is our Sovereign, and we are His subjects. He is our Father, and we His children.
(3) Add the intrinsic excellency and the manifold utility of this virtue. (a) What can more delightfully employ the soul of a reasonable and virtuous being; what is more adapted to elevate and enlarge his capacities and powers; what can procure him a more pure, a more noble, a more sensible pleasure, than the love of a God who possesses all the prerogatives and attributes which only merit love in the supreme degree, without limitation and change; who is the ever-flowing and inexhaustible fountain of light, of life, of joy, of happiness; whose goodness and grace continue for ever and ever; and who will never cease to bless His friends and worshippers, and to make them happy? (b) What is more adapted to facilitate to us the practice of all the virtues, the discharge of all our duties, than the love of God? (c) What is more adapted to comfort us in all adversities, to render us firm and undaunted in every danger, and to give us the most certain hope of the completest happiness, than love towards God?—G. J. Zollikofer.
The meaning of this commandment for us is nothing less than this: that we are to cherish and maintain within ourselves an enthusiastic devotion to the highest vision that is vouchsafed us of the Eternal Reality, the Eternal Love, the Eternal Beauty.—R. J. Fletcher.
Mark 12:31. Duty to neighbour.—Christ sums up all God’s law, all man’s duty, in the word “love.” The love of God and its manifestation in the love of man.
1. The strictness of the commandment and the frequency of its iteration.
(1) Here it is put forth as the compendium of the law, and again Romans 13:8.
(2) The breach of charity is a bar to the acceptance by God of ourselves and of our work (Matthew 5:23-24; 1 John 3:14).
(3) It is the new commandment given by Christ on the most solemn occasion (John 13:34-35).
(4) It has attached to it the promise that its fulfilment shall cover a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).
2. Its twofold channel of operation.
(1) Alms-deeds and the corporal works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, harbour the stranger and needy, visit the sick, minister to prisoners and captives, visit the fatherless and widows, bury the dead.
(2) Intercession and the spiritual works of mercy: to instruct the ignorant, correct offenders, counsel the doubtful, comfort the afflicted, suffer injuries with patience, forgive offences and wrongs, pray for others.
3. Its scope and limit.
(1) It is to be universal in its scope, reaching even to our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 10:29-38).
(2) Its limit: we are to love our neighbour as ourself; not more—a warning to those who neglect the cultivation of their own spiritual life for the active ministrations of Church work; but not less—a warning to those who think only of the needs of their own soul.—A. G. Mortimer, D. D.
Motives to universal charity.—
1. Wouldst thou love all mankind as thy brethren, rejoice in them and think of them with complacency, say sometimes to thyself, “God loves them; He designs their good; He showers His benefits upon them; He rejoices in them as the work of His hands, as His creatures, His children; He beholds them with complacency.”
2. Wouldst thou love all mankind as thy brethren, rejoice in them all, and think on them with complacency and esteem: in the judgment that thou passest on them be not biassed either by the homeliness of their figure, or the meanness of their apparel, or the humble situation in which they are placed, or by single actions, foolish or wicked, which they commit. Nothing of this detracts from the inherent worth of the man, his native grandeur and dignity, his essential excellences.
3. Wouldst thou awaken and confirm in thy soul the principle of love, inward, cordial love towards all mankind, as towards thy neighbours, frequently resolve in thy mind the various and generally useful connexions in which they all stand with thee and with human society at large. Not one is entirely useless, or absolutely and in all respects injurious to society, and no one can or will be so at all times and in every situation.
4. Wouldst thou excite and cherish in thy heart this universal charity, judge, esteem thy brethren, mankind, not merely by what at present, in this their infant state, they are and afford, but by what in all future times on every higher step of their existence they may and will be and afford.—G. J. Zollikofer.
Mark 12:32-34. The excellence of the moral law.—
I. The great practical duties of the law are supremely excellent.—
1. They are good for their own sake; whereas the institutions of the ceremonial law were good only as means to an end.
2. They can be performed only by a renewed heart; whereas the institutions of the ceremonial law may be performed by the most abandoned of mankind.
II. They are such as must commend themselves to the conscience of every candid inquirer.—
1. Are they reasonable? What can be more reasonable than that we should love Him who is infinitely lovely, and who has so loved us as even to give His only dear Son to die for us?
2. Are they conducive to our happiness? Wherein does the happiness of heaven consist but in the exercise of love?
3. Are they perfective of our nature? The want of love is that which debases us even lower than the beasts that perish. No words can describe the full malignity of such a state. But let a principle of love possess our souls, and it instantly refines all our feelings, regulates all our dispositions, and transforms us into the very image of our God.
4. Are they instrumental to the honouring of God? We know of no other way in which God can be honoured, because these two commandments comprehend the whole of our duty. But by abounding in a regard to these we may and do honour Him.
III. An approbation of them argues a state of mind favourable to the reception of the gospel.—When there is a readiness to approve the boundless extent of these commandments, there must of necessity be—
1. An openness to be convinced of our lost estate.
2. A willingness to embrace the offers of salvation.
3. A readiness to receive and improve the aids of God’s Spirit.—C. Simeon.
Mark 12:34. Not far from the kingdom.—
I. What is it to be near the kingdom?—There are habits of life, traits of character which bring us nigh—
1. A moral life.
2. Interest in religion. The Holy Spirit guides all sincere seekers of truth.
3. Knowledge of Scriptures. This is a long step nearer Christ. The seed lies ready for the sun and rain.
II. What is it to be in the kingdom?—
1. Answer supplied in narrative. To know that to love God and man is more than all mere rites is to be near the kingdom. To have that love in the heart is to be in the kingdom.
2. To enter the kingdom love must be shed abroad in the heart. This love enters when we believe God’s love to us. The last step into the kingdom is then faith—belief in God’s love to me. God’s love enters the soul like a cascade, as we believe it. Then rises up our love to God, like the spray, the vapour-cloud of the fall, that fills our life with beauty, as the mossy banks of the cascade are full of flowers and ferns. Our love to God is the return of God’s love to its source. This love shews itself to our neighbour; if not, it does not exist.
III. Why do men not go all the way?—
1. They love some secret evil. A hidden anchor holds the vessel when the tide is flowing.
2. They are not in earnest. It is necessary to “strive.”
3. They procrastinate; they lack the final act of decision; they miss the flood-tide which would have led to salvation.
IV. The responsibility of stopping short.—
1. It is full of danger. To feel “near the kingdom” breeds the presumption, “I can enter any time.” Where despair of salvation slays one soul, presumption slays a thousand.
2. The position cannot be maintained; the habits of life, the traits of character, which bring us near, will fade, unless we ask Christ to guard them. We shall drift farther every year from heaven.
3. It is fatal. “To be almost saved is to be altogether lost.”—J. H. Hodson.
Nearness not possession.—It is with the kingdom of God as with other kingdoms—kingdoms both objective and subjective—to be almost in possession is not sufficient. A man may be almost in possession of a fortune, but that adds not to his credit at the bank. A man may be almost honest or almost sober, but that will be no recommendation to a position of trust and responsibility. And as with these, so with the kingdoms of mental force, health, and social influence; nearness is not sufficient.
I. A man is not necessarily in the kingdom of God because an intelligent inquirer.—Christ does not shrink from being questioned; but let us discriminate between questioning with a view to information and questioning with a view to disputation. Moreover it is worthy of notice that when Christ pronounces upon a man’s condition that man does not farther presume upon his mere knowledge. “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” What then? “No man after that durst ask Him any question.”
II. A man is not necessarily in the kingdom of God because he knows truth when he hears it.—Twice over in the narrative we find this scribe tacitly saying Amen to the utterances of Christ. But a man may do that and yet have no affection for Christ as Saviour. This man was thoroughly orthodox. But it is quite possible to make a false god of orthodoxy. At all events theoretical orthodoxy is not enough. A man may be ready “to stand up for the truth,” nay, ready to die for it, and yet be only “not far from the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 13:3).
III. A man is not necessarily in the kingdom of God because he can answer questions bearing upon Christianity.—We fear that not a little confidence is reposed in questions having only a very remote bearing upon religion. A man may know the creed without knowing the Christ, and the catechism while yet he knows nothing of charity, Farther, a man may answer according to the letter of Scripture and yet be only “not far from the kingdom of God.” We must repent, confess, believe, and serve.—J. S. Swan.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12
Mark 12:30. Love, the most important thing.—“Father,” asked the son of Bishop Berkeley, “what is the meaning of the words ‘cherubim’ and ‘seraphim,’ which we meet with in the Bible?” “Cherubim,” replied his father, “is a Hebrew word, signifying knowledge; seraphim is another word of the same language, signifying flame. Whence it is supposed that the cherubim are angels who excel in knowledge, and that the seraphim are angels likewise who excel in loving God.” “I hope, then,” said the little boy, “when I die I shall be a seraph, for I would rather love God than know all things.”
Mark 12:31. Loving neighbour as self.—A good old clergyman, living on the borders of Salisbury Plain, was admired by his bishop for having performed “the greatest act of charity of which he had ever heard.” It will amuse you to hear what that act was. When the Rev. Samuel Settle—for that was his name—required a new suit of clothes, he used to send for the parish tailor to measure him; and when the number of inches had been correctly noted down, he would add, “Make the things a size larger than the measure, Grant.” Did he like his clothes very loose, do you think? Not a bit of it; but his reverence was a particularly small man, and the poor old parishioner to whom he usually gave his cast-off garments was a size larger. Now do you see the reason for the order to the tailor, and do you wonder at the bishop’s praise? Which of us would choose our coats or dresses to suit another person? Verily good old Mr. Settle—now gone to his rest—did love his neighbour as himself.
Mark 12:34. “Not far from the kingdom.”—When, after safely circumnavigating the globe, the Royal Charter went to pieces in Moelfra Bay, on the coast of Wales, it was my melancholy duty (says one) to visit and seek to comfort the wife of the first officer, made by that calamity a widow. The ship had been telegraphed from Queenstown, and the lady was sitting in her parlour expecting her husband, with the table spread for his evening meal, when the messenger came to tell her he was drowned. Never can I forget the grief, so stricken and tearless, with which she rung my hand, as she said, “So near home, and yet lost!”
Half a point off the course.—Almost is not sufficient. A gentleman crossing the English Channel stood near the helmsman. It was a calm and pleasant evening, and no one dreamed of a possible danger to their good ship. But a sudden flapping of a sail, as if the wind had shifted, caught the ear of the officer on watch, and he sprang at once to the wheel, examining closely the compass. “You are half a point off the course,” he said sharply to the man at the wheel. The deviation was corrected, and the officer returned to his post. “You must steer very accurately,” said the looker-on, “when only half a point is so much thought of.” “Ah, half a point in many places might bring us directly on the rocks,” he said. What avails being almost right, if destruction is the end?