The Great Commandments
THE GREAT COMMANDMENTS
MARK 12:28-37
Which is the most important commandment?
There was at least one man who asked Jesus a sincere question during this time of testing and who would not fall under the condemnation in 12:38-40. He was a scribe or rabbi, a professional teacher of the law, and he asked Jesus a question which was a frequent subject of debate in scribal circles. Could all the commandments in the law—there were reckoned to be 613 of them—be summed up in one, or could the more important ones be picked out? A famous rabbi, Hillel, had said: “What you hate for yourself do not do to your neighbor: this is the whole law: the rest is commentary; go and learn.” Jesus agreed with that sentiment (Matthew 7:12), but here he gives a different, and more penetrating answer. He quoted what was called the “Shema” (Hebrew for “Hear!”), the passage from Deuteronomy 6:4f. which Jews recited daily, and to it he added a second commandment drawn from Leviticus 19:18. Note especially how the call to obedience here is grounded in the nature of God, grace preceding the commandment. In making this reply Jesus was saying nothing very new, for there is evidence that this combination of commandments had already been arrived at by pious Jews. What Jesus was saying agreed with the insight into the spiritual and moral nature of true religion already found in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 15:22; Hosea 6:6).
But Jesus went a step further. He placed the scribe not in but only near the kingdom. Was this because the kingdom was still distant? Or was it not rather because the scribe lacked some qualification? Is not the answer that the scribe had still to learn to follow Jesus (10:21) and so be in the presence of the “kingdom incarnate”?
The second incident here tells how Jesus took up the common teaching of the scribes that the Messiah was to be an earthly descendant of David (2 Samuel 7:12f.; John 7:41f.) and suggested that this could not be the whole truth. If David, in Psalm 110, spoke of the Messiah as “my Lord,” how could the Messiah be simply his son? Some have thought that here Jesus was repudiating the Davidic descent of the Messiah; rather he was showing that “son of David” is an inadequate title for one who is David’s Lord and trying to make the people think more carefully about Messiahship and what it involved. An ancient J.B. Phillips might well have written a book for the scribes entitled “Your Messiah is too small”!