“Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently”
This remarkable scene from Mark echoes the gospel setting for Luke’s Parable of the Good Samaritan. Yet one of the scribes hearing Jesus reasoning with others asks not “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” but rather “which is the first commandment of all?” There is a difference in the tone and intent of the questions. Unlike the scene in Luke where Jesus, asking two questions about “how readest thou?” and “what is written in the Law?” draws out of the cynical lawyer the truth itself, here Jesus responds himself and gives us the actual form of the words which we know in our liturgy as the Summary of the Law, part of the Jewish Shema.
Unlike the lawyer in Luke’s account, the unnamed scribe is genuinely interested in the truth of what is being said and responds with a kind of commentary which brings out the understanding of the radical nature of the unity of the love of God and the love of neighbour. In other words, the scribe explicitly draws out the meaning of what Jesus calls “the first commandment” and “the second as being like it” about which “there is none other commandment greater than these.” The scribe recognizes that this ethical teaching is the truth of the spiritual life “better than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” It is this ethical insight that impels Mark’s statement, “Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently,” meaning wisely or prudently.
The dialogue here and in what follows points out that God’s commandment to love is not arbitrary. It challenges the underlying premise of the ideology of liberalism, the reigning world-view of our times, which sees freedom entirely in terms of something negative, a freedom from all and every form of restraint and limitation. The paradox is that such a view leads to despotic authority that negates the true authority of divine reason. What is absent is any kind of positive freedom, a freedom to the good; such is the point of the Mosaic law which has to be the good for all and not just for the benefit of the few, as Plato, too, teaches. The struggle is to understand what the good is. That requires a true openness to the spirit of the law so that we may be, as Paul puts it, “enriched by [Christ], in all utterance, and in all knowledge.” The commandments here reveal the eternal truth of God as the truth for us in our lives as spiritual and intellectual beings. It is to be grasped by our minds. It is there for the understanding as shown by the scribe. It is itself wisdom.
God does not need our love. The commandment to love him does not arise from any lack or insufficiency on God’s part. The commandment proceeds instead from the nature of God’s very being as active love, as in the recurring refrain of the Trinity season. “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.” There is great wisdom in such a statement. God commands us to love him for our sake, for the perfecting of his divine image in us, for our acquiring “intelligence in love,” to borrow a phrase from a poem by Dante.
The whole duty of the Christian appears in this command to love. “For when the love of God precedes, the love of neighbour follows” as Augustine notes. In Christ, they become both the fulfillment of the Law and the very heartbeat of Christian life. God’s life in Christ “shall confirm you [keep your steadfast] unto the end,” says St. Paul. That divine life provides the “grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil” and the reason for “pure hearts and minds to follow thee the only God.”
God’s command to love shows forth the super-abundant goodness of God. Just consider. What if God simply permitted us to love him. Perhaps, some few might take the opportunity of his permission. For even permission would be some sign of his love, some small gesture of motion towards us, a token, at least, of toleration. But what if God should not only permit us, but should invite us to love him. Perhaps a greater number would respond to his invitation. “Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden,” though, of course, there are always our endless excuses, our constant refusals of his grace. “Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, /Guiltie of dust and sinne” (Herbert).
But God commands us to love him. God’s commandment goes beyond divine permission and holy invitation. His commandment is the motion of his active love towards us. To respond in faithfulness means letting that active love move in us. He commands us to love him because our true end, our good, rests and lives in him.
Austin Farrer puts it best: “He commands us to love him, because he will have us all to do so. He will not be deprived of any man’s love. Nor will he be deprived of any part of our love, for he commands us not merely to love him, but to love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The love of God holds out two hands to catch and take us: one is the commandment that we should love, the other is the act of his own love in the sacrifice of Jesus. He does not mean that we should escape him; see, he has taken us between his two hands.”
God’s commandment is but the one hand of God’s love towards us. The other hand is Christ’s sacrifice. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” The twofold love of God in commandment and in fulfillment moves in us as the active principle of our love for God and for our neighbour. The two are intimately related. God’s love is the basis for our love. Divine love begets human love. “For it is from one and the same love that we love God and our neighbour; God, however, for his own sake, ourselves and our neighbours for God’s sake” (Augustine).
What, then, does it mean to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength? John Chrysostom tells us. “To love God with thy whole heart means the heart is not inclined to the love of any one thing more than it is to the love of God … which we cannot do unless we withdraw our hearts from the love of worldly things. To love God with thy whole mind means that all the faculties are at the disposition of God: he whose understanding serves God, whose wisdom concerns God, whose thought dwells on the things of God, whose memory is mindful only of his blessings, loves God with his whole mind. To love God with thy whole soul means to keep the soul steadfast in truth and to be firm in faith.” Like the scribe it means to love intelligently, knowingly and with true intent. To love intelligently helps us to navigate the confusions of our times and the overreach of authorities untethered from reason and wisdom.
To love God “with all thy strength” is to love God in everything that we do with all that lies in our power. God calls us into communion with himself. With the one hand, he commands us to love him and all things as in him; with the other hand, he unites us to himself through the sacrifice of Christ. “See, he has taken us between his two hands.”
“Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 18, 2021