Simple Religion

2/21/25 Bible Thought (Mk. 12)

Anyone who has ever read through the entirety of the Old Testament has found all sorts of seemingly wild laws that we can’t even begin to comprehend putting into practice. From your attire, to your interactions with others, to an entire sacrificial system that was incredibly specific. Certain priests were supposed to do certain things. Depending on what sacrifice was offered, a specific animal was chosen and divided in a specific way and offered in a specific manner. If you don’t think God has opinions, you’ve never read Scripture.

For the modern Christian, it can seem overwhelming. Truly, after people conclude the large section of biblical narratives in Genesis and the front-end of Exodus, Bible reading plans tend to bog down. For a lot of people when you hit the construction of the Tabernacle and all the Levitical laws it can be a long slog to make it through. But for all the complexities of Old Testament religion, it isn’t quite as complex as we think.

In Mark 12, Jesus is accosted with all variety of questions and tests. One guy comes to Him asking about the law, wondering which commandment is the most important. Jesus replies, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mk. 12:29b-31).

The most important thing a person can do is to love God. To love Him with every fiber of our being. Commenting on the heart, soul, mind, and strength from verse 30, the Bible lexicon Louw-Nida helps in their explanation:

“The terms in the series καρδία, ψυχή, διάνοια, and ἰσχύς do not refer to completely different parts or aspects of human personality; rather, the four are combined to emphasize the totality of the individual.”^[1]

The heart is the, “center and source of the whole inner life.”^[2] The soul is the life-source, the, “animating aspect” of earthly life.^[3] The mind is the: “faculty of thinking, comprehending, and reasoning” and speaks of human intelligence.^[4] Lastly, strength speaks more of personal capability.^[5] The love of God is to be an all-encompassing reality for the believer. That every inner aspect of our being is devoted in love to Him and that we love Him with the fullest extent of our individual personal capacity: our strength. This is the goal. This love for God isn’t partial, it isn’t compartmentalized, it’s not reserved for Sunday morning, it’s the very heartbeat of our lives 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It’s the foundation of all we do.

What’s interesting, is that this love for God could be missed, even if everything outwardly was done right. You could go through the motions of offering sacrifices without loving God. Following the food laws, without loving God. Wearing the right priestly vestments, without loving God. What mattered most was not a man’s outward religion, but what was in his heart.

All the commandments might have seemed burdensome, but in the end, they were all expressions of loving God and loving neighbor. If one truly loved God, then the commandments wouldn’t have been burdensome because they were merely an expression of worship to the God they adore.

This love, for the Christian, is merely reflective of the love that He has first given to us (1 Jn. 4:19). God loved us so much that He gave His Son for us while we were undeserving sinners (Rom. 5:8). He didn’t demand us to clean ourselves up in order to be acceptable to Him. Instead, He lavished His love upon us in the sacrifice of His Son, that we might enjoy all eternity with Him rather than being separated from Him. Our love for Him is always a response, it’s always an effect, it’s always a result, it’s never the cause. He was and is and will be the cause of all Christian love for He Himself is love (see 1 Jn. 4:8).

The Christian life is not complex. It’s rather simple. It’s all characterized by love: loving God and loving people. If we get these simple things right, then all the complexities will naturally fall into place as expressions of this love.

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^[1] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996) 675.

^[2] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 508.

^[3] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1098.

^[4] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 234.

^[5] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 484.