# Great Commandment

The Great Commandment is a term used to describe the first of two commandments cited by Jesus in  Matthew 22:35–40,  Mark 12:28–34 and Luke 10:27.

## Quotes
### Old Testament

* Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
** Deuteronomy 6:4-5

### New Testament

* One of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
** Mark 12:28-31 KJV
* Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, 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 neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
** Matthew 22:35-40 KJV

## Quotes about the Great Commandment

* Liebe ... ist ein Unmittelbares und widerspricht wesentlich vermittelten Beziehungen. Der Zuspruch zur Liebe — womöglich in der imperativischen Form, daß man es soll — ist selber Bestandstück der Ideologie, welche die Kälte verewigt. Ihm eignet das Zwangshafte, Unterdrückende, das der Liebesfähigkeit entgegenwirkt. Das erste wäre darum, der Kälte zum Bewußtsein ihrer selbst zu verhelfen, der Gründe, warum sie wurde.
   * Love is something immediate and in essence contradicts mediated relationships. The exhortation to love—even in its imperative form, that one should do it—is itself part of the ideology coldness perpetuates. It bears the compulsive, oppressive quality that counteracts the ability to love. The first thing therefore is to bring coldness to the consciousness of itself, of the reasons why it arose.
      * Theodor Adorno, Education After Auschwitz. April 18, 1966.
* Jesus ... combines all duties (1) in one universal rule (which includes within itself both the inner and the outer moral relations of men), namely: Perform your duty for no motive other than unconditioned esteem for duty itself, i.e., love God (the Legislator of all duties) above all else; and (2) in a particular rule, that, namely, which concerns man’s external relation to other men as universal duty: Love every one as yourself, i.e., further his welfare from good-will that is immediate and not derived from motives of self-advantage. These commands are not mere laws of virtue but precepts of holiness which we ought to pursue, and the very pursuit of them is called virtue.
** Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”

## See also

* Shema Yisrael
* V'ahavta