Keeping the Commandments

"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'

This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it:

'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Matthew 22:36-40 

The Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day believed that it was essential to keep the Law. They took the Ten Commandments and sheltered them with a hedge of other commandments, which were sheltered by a wall of more commandments, and so forth.  Eventually they arrived at 613 commandments, 365 prohibitions, and 248 injunctions, all of which were to be obeyed.  Ten became over a thousand.

Then along came Jesus.  This upstart, country rabbi ignored most of their rules and regulations, and challenged their authority to enforce all those rulings,  When one of the Pharisees approached Him with the question of which commandment was most important, Jesus turned the theologians on their heads. Taking the original Ten Commandments, He condensed rather than expanding on them.  Ten became two:

·         Love God with heart, soul, mind and strength

·         Love all human beings as you love yourself.