From Matthew 22:34-40 / The Impossible (Great) Commandment

Having soundly rebuked the Sadducees in the previous portion, the Pharisees now want to test the waters to see if Jesus is one of them. Maybe they can use Him to their ends if He is clearly not in the Sadducean party. But it is here where He shows that any party that does not have God’s interests first is the problem. He’s of no-one’s party. He is God’s alone.

Note first: Jesus’ citation from Deut. 6 comes right on the heels of God having given the 10 commandments. It is part of the “Shema” – the most fundamental concept in all of Judaism. While the Shema is comprised of all of Deut. 4-9, the opening statement: ““Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” heads everything else. And it is at this revelation of God’s unique oneness, that when we “hear” it, take in the full wonder of it, calls forth the only fitting response: “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

This forms a divine summary of all that is incumbent upon humankind as created in God’s image. The knowing Him for who and what He is, that revelation would so resonate with our entire being, that we should be in perpetual rapture considering it. Which then ought to overflow in wanting our neighbor to enter into the same transcendent glory in experiencing God.

But in context, we are reminded of God’s words leading up this in Deut. 5:29 – “Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!”

God knows full well, that His people, even given the most extraordinary of revelations concerning Him; even experiencing their miraculous deliverance from Egypt and His continuing supernatural signs, are not inwardly changed by such exposures. Such is the depravity of the human heart. Such is the need for true inward transformation by the Spirit. Such is the promise of the New Covenant, and why the Old Covenant must pass away and give way to it.

This transition, the Pharisees would not be prepared for. They would not be willing to cede their power, position or construct. Jesus, was not of their party.

Note second: Just what the law of God actually commands. It commands, it demands, the impossible given our current state.

Think what it is to love God as stated here; to love God in this way, and all that reflects or represents Him to the mind as well.

With all the Heart: So that He, is valued and prized above all else. Not for what He does, but for who and what He is.

With all the Soul: Not compartmentalized. So that who and what He is, informs every part of me. My thoughts, emotions, priorities – how I govern my entire life and thought process.

With all the Mind: With truth as revealed about Him in the Word. Not an imagined God, but the God who has been displayed in His Word and ultimately in Christ.

This is more impossible than drinking in the entire ocean through a straw.

How can we ever become so drawn out of self and set in our entire being in this way? Only if we are radically transformed from the inside out. Only if the entirety of the being is redirected, refocused, cleansed from its former distortions and brought face to face with the living God in all of His glory. And how is this to be done? 2 Cor. 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

This is why the Scripture calls us to see Jesus in every part of Scripture and in the fullness of His person and work. We will only get this “Son tan” as we make Him in His full revelation the ultimate and consistent pursuit of our lives.

Oh, that the Lord would grant us to grow in this way as Paul prayed for the Ephesians: “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

And again: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

And so we say with The Spirit here too: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”