With all your heart, mind & strength.

And he answered,  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…

Luke 10:27a

Martin Luther, the great Reformer, said, “Actually, the key is to understand that if we obey the first two commandments, we won’t break the others.”

This is the only commandment given by Jesus in the New Testament. The way I view commandments is not what you have to do for God, rather what you get to do as an overflow of the heart because God saved you. I want to look at this commandment and break it down.

To love the LORD with all of your heart & soul:

I look at this, and I know that the heart & soul are different, but I think they sing in tune with each other. This is the part of you that dances with or blasphemes & grieves the Holy Spirit. The reason I believe it is mentioned twice is to emphasize the weight of this.

To love the LORD with all of your mind:

This is what would fall into the category of doctrine, theology, hermeneutics, etc. This is an area that I am very passionate about. To study the scripture with the hopes of learning more about what God has revealed about Himself to us, similar to someone one in a relationship reading over love letters or, more appropriately for today, text messages from their loved one.

To love the LORD with all of your strength:

This is loving God in everything you do. 1 Corinthians 10:31 puts it this way: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” This would include things like missions, local & abroad. That you display the grace that God has shown you through your actions. James said that “Faith without works is dead”.

All three of these things are how faith manifests itself, through grace, in our lives; to be without one can be a very dangerous thing.

To love God in heart/soul & in Strength:

This would be to negate loving God with your mind. With this you wind up with people who are spiritual, where they’re “tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching” (Eph 4:14). These are the people you want to get asking the questions, that time reading scripture would benefit greatly; as well as having a friend who can answer these questions with them.

To love God in heart/soul & in Mind:

This would be to negate loving God in action. This is someone who will go to church on Sunday mornings, possibly partake in fellowship, but the rest of their week, their life, is unchanged by God. This can be a problem in the American Protestant church as it stands today; where people are Christians Sundays from 9am-12am. I would again point to James 2:17

To love God in Mind & in strength:

This is to negate loving God with your heart & soul. This is the basis of “religion”. Where someone can explain to you, in depth, the doctrine of propitiation but it never has an impact in their life. Where someone can rely on their works & knowledge to get them through but their heart isn’t in it. This is where I have the biggest struggle. I always need to check myself to see if I’m reading the Scriptures to learn more about God so I can have a better relationship with Him or to check myself to see if the Scriptures & Theology have become a functional idol. These would be like the Pharisees, referred to as “a brood of vipers”

If we fall into one of these categories, we need to come back to God & ask him to fix us, to renew us in heart, mind, & body.