Mark 12:28-44
Here in Mark 12, we are in the last week of Jesus’ life.
There is mounting tension between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders.
They see Jesus as a threat to their system (which He is).
They see Jesus as a blasphemer and a pretender (which He’s not).
Jesus is walking around the Temple teaching, crowds are gathered around Him, and up comes representatives from each of the three groups that comprise the Sanhedrin: the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Scribes.
The Pharisees come and try to frame Him as an insurrectionist by asking Him about paying taxes.
Then the Sadducees come up and try to frame Him as a heretic by giving Him a pop quiz about marriage.
Neither attempts were successful; in fact, Jesus turned them into brilliant teaching opportunities about giving our whole lives to God, and about the eternality of the human soul.
Today the third and final group from the Sanhedrin takes their swing: the Scribes.
Mark 12:28–44 (ESV):
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”
While the tone here between Jesus and the scribe is not as openly antagonistic as it was with the Pharisees or the Sadducees, make no mistake: this question is designed to test Jesus.
But as we’ll see, Jesus will again use this probing question to teach a profound lesson––one that all of us need to learn.
29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
Isn’t it amazing that out of all the things our Creator God could have chosen to elevate as the greatest rule of the universe… the single greatest pursuit… the single greatest attribute one could display… It's love. He is after our affections… our desires…
Notice, in verse 30, the word “all” is repeated four times for emphasis. We are to love God with “all” our heart, soul, mind and strength.
Heart- emotions
Soul- spirit
Mind- intelligence
Strength- will
In other words, we are to love God from the totality of our being. Loving God is not just an emotional response… although it can include that… it is a total life response to His love for us.
Jesus said, “if you love me, you will obey my commands”.
We can obey God without loving Him… but we cannot love God without obeying Him.
What does it look like to love God with our whole lives?
It looks like King Josiah in the Old Testament.
It was said of king Josiah… 2 Kings 23:25 (ESV): 25 Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.
What did King Josiah do to earn this accolade? When he became king, Israel was full of idol worship and hadn’t even read the scriptures in generations.
Then one day, Hilkiah the high priest found the book of the Law in the house of the Lord. He gave it to the secretary, who gave it to King Josiah and read it for him.
And it says that “when the king heard the words of the book of the Law, he tore his clothes.” He realized that they as a people had strayed so far from God’s words.
So he created reform. Radical reform.
Listen to what it says in 2 Kings 23…
2 Kings 23:1–25 (ESV):
1Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. 2 And the king went up to the house of the LORD, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD. 3 And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.
4 And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. 5 And he deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon and the constellations and all the host of the heavens. 6 And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. 7 And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah. 8 And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beersheba. And he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on one’s left at the gate of the city. 9 However, the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers. 10 And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech. 11 And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the precincts. And he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. 12 And the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, he pulled down and broke in pieces and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron. 13 And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 14 And he broke in pieces the pillars and cut down the Asherim and filled their places with the bones of men.
15 Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, that altar with the high place he pulled down and burned, reducing it to dust. He also burned the Asherah. 16 And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar and defiled it, according to the word of the LORD that the man of God proclaimed, who had predicted these things. 17 Then he said, “What is that monument that I see?” And the men of the city told him, “It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and predicted these things that you have done against the altar at Bethel.” 18 And he said, “Let him be; let no man move his bones.” So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria. 19 And Josiah removed all the shrines also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which kings of Israel had made, provoking the LORD to anger. He did to them according to all that he had done at Bethel. 20 And he sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were there, on the altars, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
21 And the king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” 22 For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. 23 But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem.
24 Moreover, Josiah put away the mediums and the necromancers and the household gods and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might establish the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD. 25 Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.
31 The second is this:
…So Jesus is giving the man more than he asked for… not just number one, but also number two…
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Notice the way He groups them together… In reality it’s not just that these are the most important tenets to obey, it’s that they are attached to each other. You really can’t have one without the other.
Just as we cannot love God without obeying Him, we cannot love God without loving others!
1 John 4:20 (ESV): 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
Let’s be honest: It’d be a whole lot easier if Jesus didn’t throw in that second commandment wouldn’t it?
It’d be a whole lot easier if we could just love God and still reserve some disdain for certain fellow humans. Because God is supremely lovable. He’s perfect. He’s pure. He doesn’t let us down. He doesn’t stab us in the back. He doesn’t irritate us. He doesn’t wound us.
But people do.
And yet, God is saying unless we love them, we don’t really love Him.
Why is that?
Let me give you two reasons why it’s impossible to love God if you don’t love people…
Because God IS love, and His love is expressed towards people.
Romans 5:8 says, “God demonstrates His love towards us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
So if we don’t love people, we clearly don’t love God because God is a lover of undeserving people… it’s who He is.
In order to love Him for who He truly is, we must love the most obvious thing about Him: He is a demonstrator of sacrificial love towards people. And if we don’t resonate with that, and embrace that, and want to embody that ourselves, we clearly don’t know Him or love Him.
Because to become a true God-lover you must receive His love and forgiveness… and if we don’t love people, it proves that we haven’t.
Matthew 6:14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Ephesians 4:32 (ESV): 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Parable of the unforgiving debtor…
Matthew 18:21–35 (NLT): 21 Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?” 22 “No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven! 23 “Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. 24 In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. 25 He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt. 26 “But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ 27 Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt. 28 “But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. 29 “His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. 30 But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full. 31 “When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. 32 Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ 34 Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt. 35 “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”
The point is, if we are a true child of God… a true lover of God… if we have truly embraced God’s forgiveness and grace… then our lives will bear witness to that fact in the way we treat others. And if we are harboring bitterness towards others, it’s a huge red flag that we might not be true children of God… or we’ve forgotten who we truly are. Either way, repentance is needed.
If you truly love God, you’ll love like God.
So how does the scribe respond??
32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
True entrance into the Kingdom is not ultimately based on affirmation of God’s law, or obedience to God’s law… It’s based on a relationship with Christ himself.
Jesus gets to the heart of the issue:
35 And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? 36 David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared,
“ ‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet.” ’
37 David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” And the great throng heard him gladly.
What was the scribe’s issue? The issue was that even with some accurate knowledge of the scriptures… and even with a generally amicable posture towards Jesus, he was missing the only thing that really matters: an affirmation of Jesus’ true identity and the desire to come to Him on His terms.
Scribes were willing to say that the Christ was a mere man… the mere human descendant of David… But could they accept that He was God? Could they accept that He was all at once David’s earthly descendant AND David’s eternal Lord?
Were they willing to embrace Jesus as Messiah… as Savior… as Lord…as God?
No.
Which proved that they didn’t truly love God. Sure, they could agree with Jesus’ theological statements, to a point.
But if they truly loved God they’d know Jesus.
Jesus said, “I and the Father are One.”
Jesus said, “if you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father”.
In Colossians it says that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God”.
In Hebrews it says that He is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature…”
In Acts we are told, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
The true litmus test for entrance into the Kingdom might be framed like this:
Do you love God?
Do you love people?
Do you know Jesus?
It’s impossible to answer yes to one and not all three. It’s all or nothing.
The reason the last one is the clincher is this: Who of us has perfectly loved God with every fiber of our being? Not me. Not anyone. We’ve all “fallen short”, as Romans 3:32 says.
Who of us have perfectly loved people? None of us.
We are lawbreakers. We are commandment breakers. We are deserving of the wrath of God because of our failure to love Him and others like He commands.
So where’s our hope?
Only in a relationship with Jesus.
Because Jesus perfectly loves God the Father, and demonstrates it with His perfect obedience.
Jesus perfectly loves people, and demonstrated it by going to the cross for us.
And when we place our trust in Jesus and what He’s done, His perfect record is credited to us, and we are saved.
And by the way, from our salvation comes genuine love for God, and love for people.