Imagine Jesus standing in Jerusalem in the temple courts talking to a few people. If you don’t have any idea what that ancient massive temple looked like, imagine Jesus sitting on the top steps of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., or holding court inside the West Wing of the White House.
Imagine now a religious expert, who has been sent by an unhappy and suspicious-of-Jesus group of religious experts, approaching Jesus in the temple.
Imagine the religious expert asking Jesus a question, a question that is aimed at Jesus for one reason: to trap Him.
You need to know two things: The man’s question was loaded with political implications, and Jesus’ future hinged on His answer. Here’s what the religious expert asked: “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
The religious expert’s question put Jesus in a politically vulnerable and religiously charged context. At that time, there were serious debates between leading theologians about how to read the Torah (the first five books of Old Testament, often called the Law). Should it be simplified down to a few principles, or should it be clarified into even more commands? If Jesus went in the reduce-it-to-a-few-principles direction, He’d align Himself with the liberals. If He went with the make-more-rules approach, He’d line up with the conservatives. If He did neither, He’d offend both and look lame. What made the situation even more tense was the religious expert was not really looking for information. He was trying to get Jesus in trouble by getting Jesus to take a position and offend one of the parties.
Jesus’ answer baffled the expert; but before we get to his answer, we need to sketch what was going on in Jesus’ world when the expert asked Jesus that specific question.
There’s an old Jewish rabbinic story that a potential convert approached the leading conservative rabbi named Shammai and rather shamelessly said this: “Make me a convert, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” This was a way of saying, “Reduce the Torah to a few principles so I can know if I want to commit or not.” In your world, he was saying this: “Give me the Spark Notes version!” Shammai was offended by the would-be convert’s irreverence and wacked him with a piece of wood and sent him away.
So the inquiring man went to a different school to find the more liberal rabbi Hillel and made the same request: “Teach me the whole Torah as I stand on one foot.” Hillel, in a way that reduces the whole Torah to one firm handle, said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is just commentary [on that command]. Go and learn this.”
This convert wannabe asked that question because there were many in the world of Jesus who were adding commands, and it was hard for him to know how to live before God. What do I mean by “adding commands”? There are, to be exact, 613 commandments in the Old Testament, one of which is “Don’t work on the Sabbath!” But that raises this question: “What counts as work?” The adding group spelled it out and came up with a list of 40 different activities that counted as work. So the one command had become 40 commands. The result of the adding approach to the Torah was the multiplication of commands.
So you can see why the question was loaded. If Jesus decided to reduce the Torah as did Hillel, He’d get the pro-Shammai folks irritated. If He reduced it in a way that the pro-Hillel group didn’t like, He’d irritate them. If He refused to play their game, He’d get everybody irritated. So, what did Jesus say?
Before we get there, what would you say if someone came to you, and in a Snow-White-like question asked, “What is the fairest commandment of them all?” What Jesus said teaches everyone who wants to be His follower exactly how to orient every moment of every day:
What’s the fairest commandment of them all?
Part A
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”
Part B
“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt 22:37-40).
The whole Torah, not just part of it, but the whole thing from Genesis to Malachi, will be done if every day we love God with every molecule and globule (that’s my translation) and love others as we love ourselves. Go ahead, Jesus is saying, read the whole Old Testament, and everything God tells you is either a love-God or a love-others-as-yourself command. (I suggest you sometime sit down with Exodus chapters 19 through 24, for instance, and in the margins mark “G” for love God commands or “O” for love-others-as-yourself commands. I’ve done this, and it works.)
How to Keep this in Mind:
I call this love-God and love-others statement of Jesus “The Jesus Creed.” The Jesus Creed is the very core of what Jesus wanted His disciples to practice. At the time of Jesus, every faithful Jew began and ended his or her day by reciting what is called the Shema, and the Shema is part A above. It can be found in
So, when Jesus begins His, “What’s the fairest of them all?” answer, He recited something He’s been reciting since He learned to speak. He would have learned to recite the Shema from His earthly father, Joseph, and His mother, Mary.
Jesus goes beyond this: He adds to the sacred Shema another command, the love-others command. He picked this from Leviticus, what my students sometimes call the “Bible’s weird book” because of its in-our-world strange purity codes. Anyway, by adding from Leviticus the love-others command to the love-God command, Jesus gave to His followers a brand new form of the Shema. Instead of calling this the Jesus Shema, I call it The Jesus Creed. It is Jesus’ version of the Shema.
Everything after this page will be shaped by The Jesus Creed. If Jesus thought the whole of God’s will for us is to love God and to love others, then everything He calls us to be and to do is related to The Jesus Creed.
Now my suggestion — I suggest you try this for one month:
• When you get up, say The Jesus Creed (memorize the words in italics on page 11 or look at the end of this book where it is found along with the Lord’s Prayer).
• When you go to bed, say it again.
• When you leave your house, say it again. When you enter your house, say it one more time.
• Then make this commitment to yourself (for one month): Any other time it comes to mind, say it again.
Why do these things? Just watch what happens to you when you begin to live The Jesus Creed. You will see how loving God and loving others begins to seep into everything you say, do and think. You also will find yourself living The Jesus Creed. This is precisely why God told the Israelites to repeat the Shema all the time: Repetition has a way of working itself into the soul and heart.
One of my students told me this story. She was nannying for a wealthy family, and she didn’t particularly like the kids; but it was good money, and she was trying her best to like the kids (admitting they could be difficult). One day, on her way to that home, she came to an intersection; as she waited for another car, The Jesus Creed came to her mind. So she said it. It calmed her, and she said this: “I was SO, SO different for a few hours, and then I got cranky.” The next day, she told me she did the same thing with the same result; but she wasn’t happy that she got so cranky with the kids after a couple hours. So, she said when she noticed her own irritation the next day, she stopped and said The Jesus Creed calmly one more time. She then said this to me: “Saying The Jesus Creed made SO much difference. So I started saying it more often; and you know what, Scot? I got to where I really began to love those kids. Now it’s fall and I’m back in classes and I miss them.”
Recite The Jesus Creed.
