Jesus Christ · On the Scriptures
The Greatest Commandment
A lawyer asks Jesus the oldest argument among the rabbis: which single commandment outranks all the others? Jesus does not invent a new one. He answers entirely from Scripture — the Shema, joined to a line from Leviticus — and then says something no one had asked him: every other command in the Law and the Prophets hangs on these two. Not replaced by them. Held up by them.
The Test Question
— Matthew 22:34-36And when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they themselves gathered together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him with a question: “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the Law?”The Pharisees regroup after the Sadducees are silenced — and send their best question.
“Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” was a live rabbinic debate in Jesus’s own day — the Law was reckoned to hold 613 commands, and no one had settled which one carried the most weight. The lawyer’s question is real, but Matthew is plain that his motive is not: he asks “to test him.”
Mark’s account of the same scene reads differently — the scribe comes across as genuinely curious, and Jesus ends by commending him. Both can be true at once: a question that starts as a test and ends as something else.
After the humiliation of the Sadducees Jesus was highly regarded by the crowds. The Pharisees, filled with envy out of an immeasurable shamelessness, again were testing him, hypocritically asking if he might deliver a ruling concerning the first commandment. By doing so, perhaps Jesus would amend the commandment in a manner that might lead to an accusation against him. Now, Matthew and Luke call the person who asked the question a lawyer, while Mark calls him a teacher of the law. This does not indicate a disagreement. For they both represent the questioner as one learned in the law and as a teacher of the law who is an interpreter of the law to the people. But the Lord publicly reveals their evil. They were not coming to have him interpret the law so that they might benefit but because they were seized by envy. So Jesus teaches that one should not measure out one's devotion, loving God in part but also clinging in part to the concerns of this world. Through his teaching Jesus said that his commandment was the summary of all the commandments. The lawyer thought he could cast Jesus into danger as one who makes himself out to be God. Jesus failed to respond in the manner he expected, but he ends up praising Jesus, as Mark says.
Cyril of Alexandria· FRAGMENT 251 (444), on Matt 22:34
Let no one find a difficulty in this, that Matthew speaks of this man as putting his question to tempt the Lord, whereas Mark does not mention this, but concludes with what the Lord said to him upon his answering wisely, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. (Mark 12:34.) For it is possible that, though he came to tempt, yet the Lord's answer may have wrought correction within him. Or, the tempting here meant need not be that of one designing to deceive an enemy, but rather the cautious approach of one making proof of a stranger.
Augustine of Hippo· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (430), on Matt 22:35
The Answer, From Scripture
— two citations, one verdictTHE FIRST
Love the Lord
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
Deuteronomy 6:4–5 →
THE SECOND, LIKE UNTO IT
Love Thy Neighbour
“Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.”
Leviticus 19:18 →
What He Is Saying
— the hinge claimJesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’The Shema (Deut 6:4-5) named first and great; Leviticus 19:18 named second, and like unto it.
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”Not a third commandment. A claim about what all the others rest on.
Jesus does not answer with something new. He reaches for a line every faithful Jew prayed that morning — the Shema — and fuses it to a single command tucked inside Leviticus’s holiness code, easy to walk past unless someone points at it. Then he adds a claim the lawyer did not ask for: on these two — not instead of the rest, but as what the rest hangs on — hang all the law and the prophets. Every command Moses gave, every word a prophet spoke, organizes under love of God and love of neighbor. Nothing is deleted. Everything is put in order.
On these two - hang all the law and the prophets - They are like the first and last links of a chain, all the intermediate ones depend on them. True religion begins and ends in love to God and man. These are the two grand links that unite God to man, man to his fellows, and men again to God.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), Matt 22:40
For to these two commandments belongs the whole decalogue; the commandments of the first table to the love of God, those of the second to the love of our neighbour.
Rabanus Maurus· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (856), Matt 22:40
But His commandments, and the sum of them, are, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself." If therefore to love God is to love one's neighbor, "For if thou lovest me," He saith, "O Peter, feed my sheep," but to love one's neighbor worketh a keeping of the commandments, with reason doth He say, "On these hang all the law and the prophets."
John Chrysostom· Homily on the Gospel of Matthew 71 (407), Matt 22:40
Or otherwise; That the second command is like the first signifies that the obligation and merit of both are alike; for no love of God without Christ, or of Christ without God, can profit to salvation. It follows, On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
Hilary of Poitiers· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (367), Matt 22:39–40
The Fuller Scene
— Mark 12:28-34Now one of the scribes had come up and heard their debate. Noticing how well Jesus had answered them, he asked Him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”Mark's scribe asks after watching Jesus silence the Sadducees — an honest question, not a trap.
Jesus replied, “This is the most important: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”Jesus quotes the Shema by its opening words, then joins Leviticus 19:18 to it directly.
“Right, Teacher,” the scribe replied. “You have stated correctly that God is One and there is no other but Him, and to love Him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, which is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”The scribe answers back in his own words — and goes further than Jesus asked.
When Jesus saw that the man had answered wisely, He said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to question Him any further.“Thou art not far from the kingdom of God” — a commendation, not yet an arrival.
Mark keeps the scene going past Matthew’s ending. The scribe does not just accept Jesus’s answer — he repeats it back, and adds his own line: loving God and neighbor is worth more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.That is itself a scriptural argument, echoing Hosea 6:6 and 1 Samuel 15:22 without quoting either by name. Jesus, hearing it, tells him plainly he is close — “not far from the kingdom of God.” Close, and no verse says he crossed the distance that remained.
Our Lord's answer is in a strain of respect very different from what He showed to cavillers--ever observing His own direction, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine; lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you" (Mt 7:6).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), Mark 12:28
See how He has enumerated all the powers of the soul; for there is a living power in the soul, which He explains, when He says, With all thy soul, and to this belong anger and desire, all of which He will have us give to Divine love. There is also another power, which is called natural, to which belong nutriment and growth, and this also is all to be given to God, for which reason He says, With all thy heart. There is also another power, the rational, which He calls the mind, and that too is to be given whole to God. He says that it is like, because these two commandments are harmonious one with the other, and mutually contain the other. For he who loves God, loves also His creature; but the chief of His creatures is man, wherefore he who loves God ought to love all men. But he who loves his neighbour, who so often offends him, ought much more to love Him, who is ever giving him benefits. And therefore on account of the connection between these commandments, He adds, There is none other commandment greater than these. It goes on: And the Scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God, and there is none other but he: and to love him with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. By which He shows that he was not perfect, for He did not say, Thou art within the kingdom of heaven, but, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.
Theophylact of Ohrid· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (1107), Mark 12:28–34
Jesus said to him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God - Reader, art not thou? then go on: be a real Christian: else it had been better for thee to have been afar off.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), Mark 12:34
Who Is My Neighbour?
— the question Luke's lawyer asks nextLuke tells a version of this same encounter in which the lawyer, not Jesus, is the one who joins the Shema to Leviticus 19:18 — already fused, already known as the answer. Jesus tells him he has answered rightly: “this do, and thou shalt live.” But the lawyer, “willing to justify himself,” presses further and asks “And who is my neighbour?” — the question Jesus answers with the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story this site has not yet built its own page for. Loving neighbor sounds simple until someone asks who counts.
Where It Points
— what the hinge is forHilary’s reading above cuts to the center: love of God and love of neighbor are “alike” not because they are interchangeable, but because “no love of God without Christ, or of Christ without God, can profit to salvation.” The two commandments do not stand apart from Christ as a moral summary anyone could reach on their own — they are what the Law and the Prophets were pointing toward all along, and what the one who quotes them here came to fulfil.
A voice from the early church, on the same verseCyprian, 258
The Lord in His Gospel, when He would direct the way of our hope and faith in a brief summary, said, "The Lord thy God is one God: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment; land the second is like unto it: Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." He taught, at the same time, love and unity by His instruction. He has included all the prophets and the law in two precepts.
Cyprian· Treatise I. On the Unity of the Church (258), on Mark 12:29
Closing
Asked to name the greatest commandment, Jesus points to Scripture twice and adds a claim of his own about what all the rest of Scripture is for. A scribe hears it, agrees, and is told he stands close to the kingdom. The distance that remained is the same distance every reader of this page still has to close.