“Love God... love your neighbour”

Read Luke 10:25-28

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The commands to “love God with all your heart” and to “love your neighbour as yourself” sum up and embrace our whole duty towards God and people (27; Mt.22:34-40; Dt.6:5; Lev.19:18). This “expert in the law” knew this truth in principle but his primary interest was to try and catch Jesus out with a legal question (25-26).

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The importance of these two commands means that Jesus would have referred to them often. In every part of our life (“heart, soul, mind”) we are to love God with all our strength. And loving God means we'll want to keep his commands about right behaviour to others, all of which are included and fully summed up by “love your neighbour as yourself”. So “all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments” (Mt.22:40; Rom.13:8-10, Gal.5:14).

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Jesus says that this is the heart of true religion and the key to eternal life (25,28). Not that life can be earned by such works (which in any case are beyond our ability to do perfectly). Rather, Jesus is pointing beyond the legalistic answer which the law expert expected. “He is telling him that eternal life is not a matter of keeping rules at all. To live in love is to live the life of the kingdom of God” (Morris).