“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And Jesus 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 first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22:36-40 (ESV)
Judaism taught there were 613 commandments in the Law, one for each of the letters of the Ten Commandments. These 613 commandments consisted of 248 positive commands (“thou shalt”) and 365 negative commands (“thou shalt not”). The positive and negative commands were subdivided into major and lesser commands, which involved judgment on how hard the command was to obey (Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, 1:901).
In Matthew chapter 22, we read that the Pharisees asked Jesus a question to test Him about His teaching regarding the greatest commandment. He answered them by quoting a portion of the Old Testament found in Leviticus 19:17-18. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
It is interesting to note that this theme is repeated in the New Testament in Galatians 5:14, “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And again in James 2:8, If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.
Jesus clearly resolved any controversy about the greatest commandment—speaking about the necessity of loving God first and then following up His lesson in holiness ethics by summing it up this way, love God and demonstrate it by loving others.
Loving relentlessly is loving God and others in an intense manner that continues without stopping—no matter what! God’s love is honest, bold, forgiving love, that always does what is best for the other person. This beautiful symmetry puts equal importance on the vertical and horizontal aspects of loving. In fact God asks us to love in this manner—to be pleasing to Him.
Can He count on us to set aside our differences and/or grievances—and love this way? If there ever was a time in our culture to love relentlessly, it is now!