Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and withall your strength.

• Deuteronomy 6:5

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

• Matthew 22:37

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

• Luke 10:27

The Boilerplate

My wife started to write her thoughts down at one point in her life.  Some hints point to 2018 and 2019, after she had her open-heart surgery.  In spite of her trials and the atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) that required her to take blood thinners, this was before her major health decline.

Sometimes, she wrote a thought.  Other times, she wrote a Bible verse, and maybe her idea on that day.  Other times, it is a prayer, but I am going to take one entry at a time and try to write about it

Her comment

“He said to him, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

• My wife’s next comment in this notebook

The Discussion

Again, my wife used the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) in quoting Matthew 22:37.

I have used this verse quite often, but I think it can be broken down.

The three verses above all state the greatest commandment.  The first, from Deuteronomy is what Moses wrote into the Law.

The second is from Matthew.  The words in the text are what the expert in the Law said.  He said “mind” instead of saying “strength”, but Jesus did not quibble.  To an expert in the Law, his “mind” was his strength.  The expert in the Law had been selected by the Pharisees and Sadducees to try to test Jesus.

The third is from Luke.  Again, this seems to be an expert in the Law asking the same question, but then the expert follows with, “Who is his neighbor?”, and Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.  This time, the expert in the Law says both mind and strength.

Could the stories in Matthew and Luke be the same incident?  It is possible and the slight variations could be that Matthew did not hear when “with all your strength” was added.  And the question about who was his neighbor did not matter, since Matthew did not include the Good Samaritan.  Matthew wrote a longer gospel than did Luke, but Luke used more parables (24, to Matthew’s 23) and Luke used 18 parables that were unique, one of them being the Good Samaritan.  So, this could be the story that is told slightly differently due to what the author was conveying at the moment.  It could be more than once that the question was asked, with totally different results.

But Jesus does not quibble either time.

Our heart is the center of our emotions, where our desires come from.  Thus, loving God with all our heart means nothing left for anything else.  Thus, Paul suggesting that it is good that we do not marry, he is probably thinking of 100% of our heart belongs to Jesus.  But Paul says that the physical desires might boil within us, and marriage was ordained by God, and being married could and should work in this situation, especially if husband and wife are dedicated to God.  Then it is two hearts loving God together.

Our soul is the part of us that does not die.  The soul will go into our new bodies, and we will live with Jesus forever.  Thus, our souls need to be loving God completely.

Then, Deuteronomy says “Strength” and that refers to every fiber of our body.  That would include the brain, but is the mind more than just our brain?  The mind includes our consciousness.  Our brain is the machine that stores information, but our mind puts those bits of information together to produce thought.

May we never give our mind away to people who wish to silence all thought except for their viewpoint.  Sure, we will have arguments, but the better thinkers among us can sort out what is the best thought to have, hopefully without bias other than God’s Word.

So, if the heart is everything and the soul is everything that remains, our strength can include both body and mind.  Thus, Jesus did not quibble.  They had answered properly.  God wants us to love Him with every fiber of our body, every synapse of the mind, and all our heart and soul.

And when you get older, you find that those other things are simply distractions, distractions from loving God even more.

Do I still love my wife?  I love my memories of her, even the things she did not get right.  Do I love my children and grandchildren?  Yes, I do.  Will their differing views interfere with that love of God?  If it does, God wins out.

But if we love God with everything, how can we have any love left over for our spouse, children, and grandchildren?

For all we give God, God returns in a double measure, so that we can love one another.  That is why, in the Matthew telling of the story, Jesus says that the second is as great as the first, to love our neighbor.  In loving God with everything, He provides the ability to love everyone else and the desire to do so.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory