The Greatest Commandment
Betcha can’t pick just one
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“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:36-40 (NET)
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I remember watching a lot of classic Lays potato chips commercials and they were always challenging us, “betcha can’t eat just one.”
With as much salt as they had, and as tiny as a chip was … yes, it was hard to eat just one.
I’m sure some people did, but I always failed the challenge.
Which doesn’t have a blessed thing to do with today’s verse except it came to mind when I read it. Here we have a story of a scribe — an expert in the Old Testament law — coming to ask Jesus a question: what is the greatest commandment?
Jesus can’t pick just one, so he shares two.
1. Love God.
He quotes Deuteronomy 6 here, an easy one to point to. I suspect almost everyone in the crowd that day nodded along as He quoted the beginning of the shema.
But then Jesus did something a bit radical: He added a second commandment:
2. Love People.
This comes out of Leviticus 19. (Can anything good come out of Leviticus? Ha ha)
Of course it makes sense that we should love people, but I wonder how the crowd thought about Jesus saying it’s just as important as loving God? Probably not many.
Jesus then summarizes the whole Old Testament for us.
Well, in a backwards way.
Still, how cool that we can memorize two verses and get the main message of the Old Testament? I think that’s pretty cool.
We’ve further distilled that down into four words: Love God, Love People.
A simple message to follow forever.
— Ricky Ketchum
Copyright © 2025 by Ricky Ketchum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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