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. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”-Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus gave this response to the question posed to him about which one of the many commandments God gave was the greatest. I’m sure he was expecting Jesus to give him some answer other than the one that he got. Why because the man who posed this supposedly deep question to Jesus was a Pharisee, and the Pharisees were highly legalistic believing that you had to obey ever commandment that God ever gave in order to be right with God. So to him he was expecting the answer to be all of them. However, Jesus who was God in the flesh gave the correct answer. All of the Old Testament Laws were given to the people of Israel to help them develop a love relationship with God and to then go and show that love to those around them. And the same thing applies to us today. Being a follower of Jesus is not about following a bunch of rules. It is about having a love relationship with God and then going out and sharing that love relationship with others.