According to Exodus Ch.20 and Deuteronomy Ch.5 the first two Commandments of Moses’s Law are as follows:

1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make yourself idols.

Yet when Jesus was asked what was the Greatest Commandment as in the First Commandment:

“Master, which is the GREAT COMMANDMENT in the Law”? (Moses’s Law) Matthew Ch.22

Jesus replied:

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Pretty much your entire being. Physically, emotionally and mentally must be devoted to God, there are no shortcuts. This is the FIRST and GREAT Commandment.

And the second is, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The number one thing that comes to mind when I think about loving myself is that I take care of myself. According to Jesus, the same level of care I give to myself I should extend to my neighbour. That is whoever happens to be next to me at that time. 

On these TWO Commandments hang ALL the LAW and the PROPHETS. 

(Matthew 22:37-40).

Both these Commandments that Jesus mentioned originate from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament. But as I will point out in the Hebrew Scriptures they have a different meaning, and they are intended to do so. 

Deuteronomy 6:5 “And thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6:5 follows Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One Lord.” Loving God from a Hebrew context is conditional to believing in the ‘Oneness’ of God. Believing in Jesus Christ as God, Son of God or as a Divine Being is idolatry according to Jewish interpretation. 

The Second Commandment according to Jesus, “Thou shalt love your neighbour as yourself” is also different in the Hebrew Scriptures. Leviticus 19:18 “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.” There you have it! Your neighbour is your own people, your own kin. Go outside of that and you have the parable of The Good Samaritan, told to us by Jesus Christ. The Good Samaritan stops to help irrelevant of who the person is. This is where Christians fail to understand the subtleties of the Hebrew Scriptures because they don’t know Judaism. 

How is “You shall have no other Gods before me”, different to “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”?

They can be interpreted differently, that’s what’s different about them. In Judaism and Islam, for instance, Jesus is neither God nor the Son of God. In Judaism Jesus was an imposter and a blasphemer. In Islam, Jesus is considered a Prophet. That makes Christians who believe that Jesus is God or the Son of God guilty of breaking the Second Commandment which is, “Don’t make yourself an idol.” Christians are considered Idolatrous in both Judaism and Islam.

Now consider what Jesus said was The First and Greatest Commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” 

You can be dedicated to your god but not love your god, right? A slave can be dedicated to his master but inwardly hate his master. It can be a false devotion that has no feelings or emotions attached to it. Your faith can become a ritual, a routine that has no meaning anymore. But if you love God emotionally as in having a relationship with him, then you are committed to him in your heart.

A good example of this can be a marriage, a marriage can have all the outward trimmings of a healthy marriage but internally it could be dead. You can remain dedicated and faithful to your partner and yet not love your partner. Saying, you don’t cheat on your partner because of the consequences or saying you don’t cheat on your partner because you love your partner deeply are two different things. 

If you love God then the Second Commandment according to Jesus is, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” That is whoever is next to you at that time. In fact loving one’s neighbour is a flow on effect to loving God. Because without loving God and without God’s love in us we cannot love our neighbour. What Jesus was advocating was rather than have another eight different Commandments for various sinful acts, if you love your neighbour as yourself you will not steal from them, kill them, envy them and so on. Instead you would be happy for their successes and help them in their failures. Envy is covered in the word Covet, wanting what your neighbour has, as in material things, such as your neighbours partner, car, land or house. 

Does your religious ‘love’ have boundaries? In the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) it says, both, “Show mercy” (Micah 6:8) and “Show no mercy.” (Deut 7:2 & 1 Samuel 15:3). How can this be? Isn’t it a contradiction? It is, until you understand that the ‘mercy’ shown sometimes extends only to your own kind, and ‘show no mercy’ is for your enemies. As I pointed out earlier from the Hebrew Scriptures, Leviticus 19:18 “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.” I found a similar teaching from The Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, “He also acknowledged that his intention was to do so, and to make people aware that ahavat Yisrael, love of one’s fellow, is not just one mitzvah among many mitzvot, but that it supersedes all others.” (The Life and teachings of Menachem.M.Schneerson, Joseph Telushkin). 

In Christianity we are not allowed to hate our enemies and we are to treat everyone we encounter with the same love and respect. Not just ‘one’s fellow’. There is a vast difference between ‘thy people’ and ‘all people’.  That is what Jesus Christ taught. Jesus was a brilliant teacher, in his rendition of The Good Samaritan he explained this principle perfectly. If an unrecognizable human lay on the side of the road, bloodied and battered would you help him? Irrelevant of who he was? Or would you look to see, if he was rich or poor, black or white, friend or foe before you helped him? That was the crux  of the story of the Good Samaritan. 

So, according to Jesus Christ of Nazareth if you are obedient to only Two Commandments, to love God and love your neighbour as yourself, you are fulfilling every Commandment of God. 

All Scripture is the KJV 

Images AI generated.

Cheryl Mason. 

My article on The Ten Commandments:

The Ten Commandments – Three versions: Which version did God give Moses?

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