By Mark W. Christy, PhD
In Mark 12:29-30, Jesus declares the greatest commandment: “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.”[i] Here, Jesus makes clear that one’s entire devotion should be wholly focused on God who has revealed Himself in unified wholeness. Because of His oneness, people are called upon to worship Him with an undivided loyalty that consumes their entire being. To better understand this command, this article will explore more deeply what Christ means in His divine directive to love God “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
In English, a claim to love someone with all of one’s heart typically connotes a deeply emotional sort of affection since the heart is viewed as the place from which emotions emanate. In the biblical language employed by Mark, “heart” refers to the entirety of one’s personality as the center of both thoughts and feelings. This interpretation closely accords with the Old Testament (OT) version of the greatest command which uses a term meaning “kidneys” (alternatively, “intestines”) because in Hebrew this term carried the same connotation as “heart” in Koine Greek.
Even though “heart” refers broadly to one’s personality, it still emphasizes thinking over feeling without neglecting the latter according to D. A. Carson.[ii] For this reason, one may be tempted to conceive of the “heart” to solely be a reference to one’s cognitive pursuit of God; nevertheless, this would be “a bit narrowly cerebral” based upon the biblical language being employed. While this is true, Jesus most certainly intends to guide His followers to fully engage God and their relationship with God with their minds because He plainly says that they are to love God “with all [their] mind.” Much like English, “mind” should be viewed as the locus of one’s thinking and understanding.
Despite His admonition to love God with all of one’s thinking capacity, Jesus also implores His followers not to neglect their emotions in their love of God. To this end, He calls upon all God-worshippers to love God with “all [their] soul.” “Soul,” in Koine Greek, should be understood as “the source of one’s desires and feelings.”[iii] Jesus Himself demonstrates the emotional dynamics related to one’s “soul” in Matthew 26:38: “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.”
As Carson notes, loving God with all their “soul” obliges Christ-followers to love Him with intense sincerity. Likewise, loving God “with all strength” carries this obligation to the level of total commitment of one’s entire person unswervingly to the Person of God. Taking together, Jesus is calling upon His disciples to love God by exercising every aspect of their being.
In conclusion, Christians who would truly love God must avoid both hyper-intellectualism and hyper-emotionalism in their pursuit of a right relationship with God. Instead, they should come to the Lord by engaging Him with their minds carefully checked by Scripture and their hearts beaming with sincere devotion. In this way, they will fulfill the original purpose behind Christ’s quotation of the greatest commandment in the OT. That purpose, which can be seen In Deuteronomy 6:1-5, is that God’s people would possess and exhibit obedience to God.
[i]All Scripture references are taken from NASB1995.
[ii]D. A. Carson, Love in Hard Places (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 21.
[iii]Robert H. Stein, Mark, in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 561.