Love the Lord your God
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 The Greatest Commandment
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 NIV
Jesus referred to these verses as the Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22:37-38). They begin with “Hear, O Israel”, and are known in Hebrew as the šāmaʿ (שָׁמַע, “hear”). The šāmaʿ is the Hebrew confession of faith, and describes who God is and how His people are to act towards Him.
By stating that the Lord is one, we are being told that God is a singular being, not a pantheon of false gods like Baal, Ashtoreth, or the many other pagan images. Jewish people often point to the šāmaʿ to disqualify what we as Christians know as truth — that there is one God existing in three Persons (the Trinity). At some synagogues and at some times when the šāmaʿ was being recited by all in attendance, the word for one — אֶחָד (eḥāḏ) — would be loudly repeated for several minutes as a way to rebuke Christians who believe in the Trinity.
Christians understand the unity of God existing in three persons, not three different gods! This is stated in 1 Corinthians 8:6, which says “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live”. Even those who speak Hebrew should realize the difference! אֶחָד (eḥāḏ) is defined not only as one, but as “one...another, the one...the other, one after another, one by one”, in other words, as a compound unity. Hebrew has another completely different word יָחִיד (yāḥîḏ) defined as “only, unique, one”.
Eḥāḏ is used at several points in the Bible to describe a compound unity. In Genesis 2:24, the word is used in “the two shall become one flesh” (my emphasis); in Exodus 26:6, there is a description of fifty gold clasps holding the curtains of the tabernacle together so that it would be eḥāḏ — one, made up of many parts. The point of this Hebrew lesson? That our One God in Three Persons is described perfectly with the term eḥāḏ.
Going even further in this direction is commentary from Enduring Word:
i. Rabbi Simeon ben Joachi, commenting on the word Elohim: “Come and see the mystery of the word Elohim; there are three degrees, and each degree by itself alone, and yet notwithstanding they are all one, and joined together in one, and are not divided from each other.” Clarke adds: “He must be strangely prejudiced indeed who cannot see that the doctrine of a Trinity, and of a Trinity in unity, is expressed in the above words.”
ii. Leupold quoting Luther on Elohim: “But we have clear testimony that Moses aimed to indicate the Trinity or the three persons in the one divine nature.”
At this point, I think we’ve pretty much consigned to the dumpster any argument that Deuteronomy 6:4 means that the Trinity is a Christian fabrication. Let’s go on to the next part of the Greatest Commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
God wants us to love Him completely and with all of our being. We can look at 1 John 4:19 (“We love Him because He first loved us”) for direction, as He loves us completely.
God doesn’t want all the things we think He wants — our submission, our will, our money and our time. He just wants our love. Freely loving the Lord with all of our hearts, soul, and mind means by default that we are freely giving Him everything. Without our love for God, all is wasted.
You’ll recall that Jesus said that the second commandment “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” was like the Greatest Commandment. It actually flows from the first, greatest commandment, for when we learn to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all of our soul and with all of our mind, loving our neighbor as ourselves should come easily.
Heaven On Wheels Daily Prayer:
Father in Heaven, thank You for the grace that You have bestowed on me and the entire human race, which shows that Your love for us is so immense that You sent Your only begotten Son to die for our sin. May I spend the rest of my life learning to love You with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength so that I die to self and live for Christ. I ask that Your love be manifested in me in my dealings with all I meet. AMEN.