And He said to him, “ ‘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 foremost commandment. Matthew 22:37,38 (1)

Notice that this is not merely “a” great and foremost commandment; it is “the” great and foremost commandment. In other words, the Greek nominative article ho (translated as “the”) is actually there.

This has some pretty clear implications.

What Jesus was saying is that loving the Lord our God is not just a great thing to do; it is the greatest thing we can do. There are, of course, other great things we can do such as glorify God, obey God, know God, but those are all exceeded by the greatest of all, loving God. Full stop. It is not loving God so that we can glorify him. The greatest thing we can ever do is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, full stop. When he added that it was also the “foremost” commandment, he was saying that it was the highest priority a human being has. So if loving the Lord our God is the greatest thing we can ever do, and the highest priority a human being has, then this must necessarily be our ultimate purpose for existence.

If we are to truly love someone, it is helpful to know who and what the person is.

Who and what is God?

There are two things about God that are highly relevant here.

First, we observe in the epistle of James the following …

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:17 (1)

What this means is that God is the origin of every good thing, including beauty, music, love, honor, purity, and much more. What could possibly be more fulfilling than to love the being who is the origin of beauty, purity, music, art, love, honor, and every good thing and every perfect gift?

The second thing to contemplate is something Jesus said …

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13 (1)

What this means is that God, the Father of Lights, has demonstrated his love for us in the most extreme way possible. In other words, the one who asks us to love him already loves us with a magnitude of love that is beyond our comprehension. We have been designed to love God. Every good thing and every perfect gift are the call of God to us.

Application: A significant point in my life occurred one morning when it occurred to me that my concept of loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength might fall vastly short of the full extent of what Jesus meant when he said that. I was immediately moved to pray “Lord, bring me to that place, closer and closer each day, where I truly do love you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength in the way you fully meant when you said that. It is now part of my daily prayer and is a road I walk that always leads higher up and further in. Would you like to make this your daily prayer as well?

References:

1.  New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Jas 1:17). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.