Passage: Mark 12:28-34

The Big Idea

When a scribe asked Jesus which commandment is greatest, Jesus summed up the whole Law: love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what we were created for. But be honest: none of us loves God or people the way the Law demands. Telling someone to “just love God more” is still Law, good but impossible. The good news isn’t that we love God; it’s that God loves us. When we believe the gospel moment by moment, His Spirit produces in us the very love the Law requires.

Super Honest Time

One question: do I love God the way He deserves to be loved? Perfectly?

No.

Try these:

Is the Lord the all-consuming passion of my life?
Do I have a deep, intense, lasting affection for Him?
Am I loyal to Him with an exclusive love?
Do I resist anything or anyone that would dishonor Him?
Am I zealous to defend His name and honor?
Do I enjoy spending time with Him?
Do I do things that please Him and increase His joy?
Do I brag on Him to others?
Do I tell Him I love Him?
Do I talk with Him as much as I can?

No. We don’t love God as we should.

But being a Christian doesn’t mean measuring up and qualifying by your goodness and performance. Being a Christian means realizing I’ve never really loved God as I should, and believing that He loved me first. He loved me anyway. And His love and His gospel produce His kind of love in me.

It’s never my job to muster up love. My job is to receive His love and let it change me.

Should we love? Yes. It’s the greatest command. We were created to love God; it’s the purpose of our existence. A car is made to drive, a plane to fly, a shovel to dig. We were made to love God, perfectly.

But we don’t.

Here’s where people get confused. I’ve heard it over and over: “Your problem is you don’t love God enough. So the solution is to love God more!”

I agree I don’t love God as He deserves. But how am I supposed to just love Him more? I could never love Him as He deserves. I don’t have that in me.

Love is a law. And how do we obey a law? Only through the living grace of Jesus, never through our own effort or desire. Knowing what the law says doesn’t mean we can do it.

If someone tells you to love God more and love others more, they’re telling you to keep the Law. Which is good. But impossible. And it’s not the gospel.

The Question (Mark 12:28)

One of the scribes came up and heard them debating. Seeing that Jesus had answered them well, he asked Him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”

This scribe was sharp. He brought an honest question to Jesus, sensing that Jesus had the words of eternal life. Which He does!
Pay attention to the question: what is the greatest commandment in the Law?
The rabbis counted 613 commandments in the five books of Moses: 365 negative (“do not”) and 248 positive (“do”).
He wanted to know which one was most important.

Let me be clear: the question wasn’t “How do I get saved?” or “How do I please God?” or “How do I become a Christian?” It was “What does the Law require? What does God expect of human beings?”

That’s a huge difference. And the answer is: be holy, loving and perfect.

Love God (Mark 12:29-30)

Jesus answered with Israel’s great confession: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

The command is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Why? Because He deserves it, for who He is.

When the LORD passed before Moses, He described Himself: compassionate and gracious, patient, overflowing with faithful love and truth, showing mercy to thousands and forgiving every kind of sin, yet never simply pretending guilt away (Exodus 34:6-7).

If we did love God perfectly, all the other commandments would be easy.
But we don’t.
So what do we do? I’ll get there. For now, let’s squirm a little in our failure and weakness.

How much does the command require? Perfect love. Whole life, whole mind, whole heart, never ceasing. It’s what He deserves, and what we fail to give Him.

Sinclair Ferguson has observed that God is never satisfied with less than the devotion of our whole life for the whole of our lives.

Love Your Neighbor (Mark 12:31)

“The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:18). There is no other commandment greater than these.”

First love God. Then love others. Simple, right?
How much do we have to love others? Perfectly. As ourselves.
“Neighbor” isn’t narrow here. It includes all humanity, every person made in God’s image, even our enemies (Luke 10:25-37).

Tim Keller makes the point that Jesus shows love defines the lawful life, and the law defines the loving life. When Jesus boils the Law down to “love God and neighbor,” He’s saying we haven’t fulfilled a law just by avoiding what it forbids. We have to do and be what the law is really after: love.

This is the great summary of the Law: love God and love others.

Not try to love God and others.
Not do your best.
The Law demands perfect obedience and perfect, selfless love.

Is this good news? No! The Law is never good news. It only points out our failure and inability.

So where’s the good news? We’re getting there.

Not Far from the Kingdom (Mark 12:32-34)

The scribe said, “You’re right, Teacher. You’ve truly said that He is one, and there is no other besides Him. And to love Him with all the heart, all the understanding and all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask Him any more questions.

Jesus commended this scribe, because he really understood what the Law was saying.
That’s a big step. But it’s not everything. Jesus didn’t say he was in the kingdom, only “not far.”
Just knowing you’re supposed to love doesn’t get you in. We’re still bankrupt sinners. That knowledge only confirms our guilt: we don’t love God and we don’t love others as we should.

So what do we do with that knowledge and guilt?

Humble ourselves before Jesus.

Confess that we don’t love God, or people, the way we should.
Confess that we could never produce that kind of love on our own.

Put our faith in Jesus.

Jesus offers us forgiveness. We take it by faith.
Jesus offers us His own loving Spirit. We receive Him by faith.
Jesus promises us His perfect love. We experience it by faith.

Law and Gospel

The Bible is full of both Law and gospel, and we need to be able to tell the difference. It’s my job to help you see it.

The Law says, “Love God and love others.”

The Law commands you to do things.
It gives you no help at all to do them.

The gospel says, “God loves you.” He loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

The gospel declares what God has done for you!

So what do we do? Believe the gospel. Every day, believe it’s everything you need. Moment by moment, believe the gospel.

What will believing it do for us?

John says real love isn’t our love for God, but His love for us, shown when He sent His Son to be the sacrifice that satisfied justice for our sins. And since God loved us like that, we ought to love one another (1 John 4:10-11).

When we let the gospel of His love and grace sink in, it reproduces in us, by the power of God, the very love the Law demands.
His life of love will grow and overflow out of our hearts!
How? By believing the gospel. Believing the gospel moment by moment is what Jesus calls abiding in Him (John 15:4-5).

Believing the Law can’t do that. The Law can’t transform anyone; only the Holy Spirit can. The Law can’t save anyone. Knowing what we should be only shows us that we aren’t.

The Law is like a doctor who tells you your diagnosis and walks out of the room. Jesus is the Doctor who comes in afterward and heals you by His own power and love.

Let Jesus be Jesus. Let the Law be the Law. And don’t confuse the two.

If you tell someone to “love God more,” understand that that’s just Law, no different from telling them not to steal or murder. If being a Christian were about keeping the Law, none of us could be Christians.

So Do I Just Sit There?

Should we fulfill what the Law describes? Yes, every part, fully, from the heart. But how? By believing the gospel and walking in it by faith.

“So I just sit around like a bump on a log and do nothing?”

No. That’s not believing the gospel and walking in it.

“Believe” sounds passive, but it isn’t. To believe the gospel means diving into the life of Jesus every day. In every decision, we believe His love and grace for us, and then step out in faith to obey His commands, trusting His finished work on the cross.

Example: you need to love your family. That’s the law of God’s kingdom. You can try to do it two ways:

The flesh. Try your best to love them. You’ll fail, because the flesh can’t do God’s will, no matter how hard you try or how badly you want to.
The Spirit. In the gospel, Jesus promises His Spirit to transform us and animate our lives. So if we believe the gospel, we’ll admit we can’t love on our own. We’ll call on Him, really pray and ask Jesus for the grace to love our family. Then we’ll step forward in faith: open our mouths to speak love and step up to do loving things.

See how active that is? Praying, trusting, confessing, reading the Word to learn what love really is. So much activity, but none of it self-sourced. All the Spirit. All for God’s glory and by the grace of Jesus!

Grace Takeaway

“Love God and love your neighbor” is the perfect summary of what we were made for, and the perfect proof that we’ve fallen short. The Law can diagnose us but never heal us. The good news is that God loved us first and sent His Son. Stop trying to squeeze out more love by effort. Believe the gospel, receive His love moment by moment, and let His Spirit grow in you the love you could never produce on your own.

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Do You Love God? Law and Gospel