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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 3
people their great deficiency, and taught the necessity of good works,
deeds of mercy and benevolence, and that a tree is known by its fruits.
The learned lawyer approached Jesus with a direct question: “Mas-
ter, which is the great commandment in the law?” The answer of Jesus
is as direct and forcible: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first
and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets.”
He here explicitly shows the questioner the two great principles
of the law: Love to God and love to man. Upon these two principles
of God’s moral government hang all the law and the prophets. The
first four commandments indicate the duty of man to his Creator; and
the first and great commandment is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
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with all thy heart. This love is not a passion, nor a fruitless faith in the
existence and power of God, a cold acknowledgment of his boundless
love; but it is a living, active principle, manifested in willing obedience
of all his requirements.
Jesus taught his hearers that not one of the precepts of Jehovah
could be broken without violating one or both of the great principles
upon which rested the whole law and the prophets: Love to God and
love to man. Every precept is so connected with the others in meaning
and obligation that in breaking one, the whole is broken; for they are
all united in one symmetrical body. It is impossible for man to love
God with all his heart and yet to have other gods before the Lord. This
supreme love to God does not consist in a mere acknowledgment of
his universal power, and the offering of a prescribed form of worship
to him, while the heart finds delight in serving idols. Self-love, love of
the world, or an undue affection for any created thing, is idolatry in
the sight of God, and separates the affections from him. God requires
the heart’s best and holiest affections, and he will accept nothing less.
He must reign supreme in the mind and heart.
If the first commandments are loyally observed, the other six,
which define the duty of man to his fellow-man, will be as faithfully
observed. When God has his rightful place on the throne of the heart
the duties assigned in the last six commandments will be performed
as there directed. Love to God comprehends love for those who are
formed in his own image. “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his