“You Shall Love the Lord God with All of Your Heart…”

Awhile back, the angels asked me to dedicate Sundays to the Gospels. With Love and gratitude, here is the Gospel of Mark 12:28B-34. MK 12:28B-34 

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
“Which is the first of all the commandments?” 
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.” 
The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher.
You are right in saying,
‘He is One and there is no other than he.’
And ‘to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding,
with all your strength,
and to love your neighbor as yourself’
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,
he said to him,
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.” 
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Ten Commandments are fulfilled when we Love God first and we love each other as ourselves; as God Loves us. The first three commandments all have to do with God (when we Love God with all of our heart, mind and soul, we are fulfilling the first 3 Commandments: 

• I am the Lord your God. …

• You shall have no other gods before Me. …

• You shall not take the name of God in vain. …

And the following 7 have to do with the way we treat one another (when we love each other as ourselves and as God Loves us, we fulfill the last 7 Commandments): 

• Honor thy Father and Mother

• Thou shalt not kill.

• Thou shalt not commit adultery.

• Thou shalt not steal.

• Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.

• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.

When we love God first and place Him first, and love each other as ourselves, Jesus said we are fulfilling the law when we act in this way.  Jesus has taught us to live according to the Spirit and when we do this, there is no law- for we have fulfilled it in Love.  It reads in Galatians 3:24-29:

Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.  But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

and in Romans 8:3-4 it reads : 

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.