Mark 12:33

Mark sets this scene in the temple courts in Jerusalem during the final week before Jesus’ death, at the end of a run of hostile questions. The chief priests, scribes and elders had challenged his authority (Mark 11:27–33), the Pharisees and Herodians had tried to catch him over paying tribute to Caesar (Mark 12:13–17), and the Sadducees had brought him a puzzle about the resurrection (Mark 12:18–27). Each time his answer left them silent. The whole of Mark 11–12 is one long contest over his authority, and this scribe steps out of it with a different purpose.

A scribe, grammateús, takes his name from gramma, a letter or a writing. The scribes were learned men, often linked with the Pharisees, who spent their lives copying, interpreting and teaching the Law of Moses, and they were widely respected and influential. This one had heard the others “reasoning together”, disputing with Jesus, and he perceived “that he had answered them well”. The verb for perceiving, eídō, properly means to see, with the eyes or with the mind, so the scribe saw for himself that Jesus’ answers were right. “Well” is kalōs, rightly or excellently. His own question comes from respect for what he has heard, and Jesus’ warm words to him at the end confirm that he asked it honestly.

“Which is the first commandment of all?” Teachers of the Law in that day often debated which commandment ranked highest, looking for one principle that would gather up the whole Law, which by the traditional rabbinic count holds 613 commandments. The word for commandment, entolḗ, comes from entellomai, to enjoin, and means a charge or command laid on someone with authority. The scribe wanted to know which of all God’s commands stands at the head of the rest. Matthew says that the crowds were astonished at Jesus’ teaching, “For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:28–29), and here a scribe comes to learn from him.

Matthew tells this exchange as well (Matthew 22:34–40), and there Jesus adds, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Luke records the same two commands in an exchange between Jesus and a lawyer (Luke 10:25–28), which leads into the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Jesus answers by quoting Deuteronomy 6:4, the confession Israel calls the Shema after its first Hebrew word, “Hear”. Devout Jews recited it every morning and evening, and it set Israel’s faith apart from the many gods of the nations around them. The scribe knew it as well as he knew anything, and Jesus begins there. He calls it “the first”, prōtos, a word that means first in order and foremost in rank. Before God’s people are told to do anything, they are told who he is.

“Hear”, akoúō, stands for the Hebrew Shema, and the hearing it calls for means listening with attention, taking the word to heart and obeying it. “O Israel” addresses the people of the covenant, whom God had bound to himself. “The Lord our God” names the God of Israel, and in Deuteronomy “the LORD” stands for his own name. “One”, heîs, is the ordinary numeral, and here it declares that he alone is God, unique and without a rival. Isaiah hears the LORD say the same: “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me” (Isaiah 45:5). Paul repeats it to a church living among idols (1 Corinthians 8:4–6).

The oneness of God comes first, and the command to love grows out of it. Because there is one God, he alone has the right to our worship and our whole heart. Every other loyalty, to possessions, to ideas of our own making or to ourselves, gives way before him, and a heart that loves him with all it has is a heart with one Lord.

Then comes the command itself: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”. These words are Deuteronomy 6:5, which follows straight on from the Shema.

The verb, agapáō, is the word the New Testament uses most for love. It is a love that commits the will as well as the feelings and seeks the good of the one loved, even at a cost to oneself. Loving God in this way is a love we choose and keep choosing, shown in trust, worship and obedience. It is also the love God himself shows, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and he showed it when he gave his Son (John 3:16).

Each of the four phrases begins with “all” (hólos, whole or entire), and together they take in every part of a person.

• The heart, kardía, is the centre of a person in Scripture, where thought, will, feeling and moral character meet. Loving God with all the heart means giving him our inmost desires and intentions, with none held back.
• The soul, psychḗ, is the breath and life of a living being. Loving God with all the soul means giving him our very life.
• The mind, diánoia, built from dia (“through”) and nous (“mind”), is the power to think things through and understand them. Loving God with the mind means learning his truth and letting him reshape our thinking, as Paul says: “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
• The strength, ischýs, is our power and energy, the abilities and resources we have to act. Love with all our strength shows itself in work, service and the use of all we have for him.

Jesus calls this “the first commandment”, and so he sets it above every other. The love God asks for starts in the heart and works outward. Earlier in Mark, Jesus rebuked those who honoured God with their lips while their hearts were far from him (Mark 7:6–8), and in Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, he presses the commands of the Law down to the heart. Here he takes what Israel already confessed and shows how deep it goes.

The scribe asked for one commandment, and Jesus gives two: “And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The word “like”, hómoios, means similar or of the same kind. The second command comes from Leviticus 19:18, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD”, and Mark’s Greek uses the same verb, agapáō, for both commands. So the whole of Jesus’ answer joins Deuteronomy 6:4–5 to Leviticus 19:18, and he closes it with “There is none other commandment greater than these.”

Both commands were well known in Israel, and in his answer Jesus binds them together and sets them over the whole Law. Love for God and love for neighbour belong together. John writes, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20–21). Paul says that every other command is summed up in this one and that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:9–10), and again, “all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Galatians 5:14).

“Well, Master, thou hast said the truth”. “Well” is kalōs, the same word Mark used in verse 28 when the scribe saw that Jesus “had answered them well”. “Master” is didáskalos, “teacher”, a respectful way to address one who teaches. “The truth” is alētheia. In the Gospels it is rare for a religious leader to agree with Jesus this openly, and it comes straight after the hostile questions of the same day.

The scribe repeats the confession in his own words: “for there is one God; and there is none other but he”. “One God” is heîs theós. Theós is the common word for a deity, used with the article of the one supreme God, and the New Testament can use it of the gods of the nations, as when Paul speaks of “gods many, and lords many” (1 Corinthians 8:5). Against all of them the scribe says ou állos plēn autós, “no other except him”. He uses the word God where Jesus used “Lord”, and the two of them confess the same truth.

“And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly”. “Saw” is eídō, the same verb as the scribe’s “perceiving” in verse 28, so each man saw the truth in the other’s answer. “Discreetly”, nounechōs, is built from nous, “mind”, and echō, “to have”, and means sensibly or intelligently, with understanding. Jesus heard a man who had grasped what he said.

His verdict joins ou, “not”, to makrán, “far off” or “at a distance”. “The kingdom of God” is basileía, which comes from basileús, “king”, and means royal rule or a realm, here the reign of theós, God himself. Jesus began his preaching by announcing it: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). God’s kingdom is his rule over all who submit to him, present now through faith and still to come in its fullness. The scribe’s grasp of the heart of the Law had brought him to its edge.

The scribe asked for the heart of the Law, and the one who answered him is the only person who has ever kept it perfectly. Jesus loved his Father with all his heart, praying in Gethsemane, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). His soul was made an offering for sin (Isaiah 53:10–12). He could say, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29), and he kept his Father’s commandments and abode in his love (John 15:10). He spent his strength in obedience “unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8).

He loved his neighbour in the same way. He came “not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), and he died for us while we were sinners and enemies (Romans 5:8–10). “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Then he gave his disciples a new commandment, to love one another as he has loved them (John 13:34–35), which makes his own love the measure in place of “as thyself”.

The burnt offerings the scribe set below love were shadows of the sacrifice Christ offered once for all (Hebrews 10:1–10). Jesus came to fulfil the Law (Matthew 5:17), and “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). The one Lord of the Shema is fully made known in the Son, the Word who “was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), by whom all things were created (Colossians 1:16), “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:1–3). All power in heaven and earth is given to him (Matthew 28:18), he is the way to the Father (John 14:6), and every tongue will confess “that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10–11).

In these verses God tells us who he is: the one Lord, with none beside him. He tells us what he wants from us above every offering, which is ourselves, heart, soul, mind and strength, together with a real love for the people he places near us. Those commands are larger than any of us can keep alone, and God has met that need. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans 5:5), so the love he commands is the love he gives.

The scribe came near by seeing that love is the heart of God’s will, and the one who commended him is the King who brings his people all the way in. Both commands are kept perfectly in Christ, and by his Spirit they begin to be kept in us.