Love the Lord your God. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus' summary of the entire law. Two commands. Everything else hangs on them.
The episode in a glance.
- 01A lawyer asked Jesus for the greatest commandment — Jesus gave him two.
- 02'All your heart, soul, mind' — total devotion to God comes first.
- 03'Love your neighbor as yourself' — the second is 'like' the first.
- 04'On these two depend all the Law and the Prophets' — the rest is commentary.
Read along.
Matthew 22:37-39 — Jesus said, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
A religious lawyer asked Jesus to pick the most important commandment in all of Scripture. It was a test, but Jesus took it seriously.
He started where every faithful Jew would — Deuteronomy 6. Love God with everything. Total devotion. Nothing held back.
Then he did something the lawyer didn't ask for. He added a second. 'And a second is like it.' Not equal — but inseparable. You can't truly love God and ignore the person next to you.
And then the kicker in verse 40: 'On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.' Everything else in the Bible — every command, every prophet, every law — hangs on these two.
If you want a life-organizing summary of what God wants from you, this is it. Love him. Love them. Build the rest of your life on those two hinges.