R.C. Sproul

When He says, what is the first commandment, it's not the question of chronology, but the question of priority.

He's asking, what is the single most important commandment that God has ever given to this world?

What commandment sums up the whole duty of human beings before their Creator?

And what is in view here is not simply a question about what the sum and substance is of obligations of members of the household of Israel, or then later of the Christian community, but rather of the entire world.

What is the chief duty of every human being created in the image of God?

Now there were many times in the Old Testament where people gave executive summaries of our chief obligation to God.

We remember Micah saying, what does the Lord require of thee but to love mercy, to do justly, and to walk humbly with thy God, and elsewhere the just shall live by faith.

Rabbi Hillel, who taught 20 years before the ministry of Jesus, summed it up this way when he said, "'What you would not want done to you, do not do to your neighbor.'"

Now what you see there and hear there obviously is the golden rule, in this case articulated not in positive terms as Jesus did, but in terms of a negative prohibition.

Don't do to your neighbor what you don't want to have your neighbor do to you.

And then Hillel added to this, this is the essence of the law.

Everything else is mere commentary on it.

And so there were these attempts to sum up the whole duty of man in one single sentence.

And so when Jesus is asked to do this,

He directs the attention of the scribe back to the most fundamental summary of obligation that God gave to His people in the Old Testament.

He takes them back to the Shema.

And before I read the Shema to you, let me read the few verses that begin chapter 6 of Deuteronomy as the introduction to it.

We read, Now this is the commandment,

And these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you, your son, and your grandson, all the days of your life."

that your days may be prolonged."