What Does It Mean To Love God With All Our Heart, Soul, and Mind?
By Eric Chabot, CJFM Midwest Representative
In Mark 12.28-34 we find a scribe asking Jesus a serious question, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus replied by saying, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; 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.” Jesus then added a second commandment (from Leviticus 19.18) when he said, “The second is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Here we see the Shema is the central creed
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart
“Shema Israel, Adonai elohenu, Adonai
In the Tanakh (the acronym that is formed from the first three parts of the Hebrew Bible: Torah (the first five books of the Bible), Nevi’
In the Shema, hearing is directly related to taking heed and taking action with what you’ve heard. And if you don’t act, you’ve never heard. Hence, in Deut. : 6: 4-9, we see who our God is and how we should respond to him. It should be a holistic commitment towards him. We love our God with our emotions, our actions, our entire beings (including our minds).
When we come to faith, God goes to work on redeeming the entire person. And this is also related to how we are created in God’s image.
Remember the following:
2. The heart
3. The heart functions as the conscience. After Peter's sermon the audience was "cut to the heart" (Acts 2:37
4. The heart is related to our wills: Finally, the heart plans, makes commitments, and decides:. "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps" (Proverbs 16:9
5. The heart is related to intellectual activity and thinking (Matthew 9:4): Yeshua says to his audience, “ Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?” Yeshua says “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”- Matthew 15: 19-20.
Remember, Biblical faith is a holistic commitment to God. It is a commitment that calls for us to submit our mind, emotions, and will all to the glory of God.
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