Charles Spurgeon Commentary Matthew 22:38

"This is the great and first commandment." — Matthew 22:38 (ASV)

These were very familiar words to our Lord’s hearers, for all devout Jews were in the habit of repeating them every morning and evening. Deuteronomy 6:4–9, from which our Savior quoted, was one of the four passages which were worn as phylacteries (Matthew 23:5).

Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. Because He is our God, Jehovah claims our heart’s love. As our Creator, Preserver, Provider, and Judge, He commands us to yield to Him all our heart’s affection, to love Him first, best, most fervently—beyond all comparison to the love we have for any fellow creature or for ourselves.

And with all your soul. We are to love God with all our life, to love Him more than our life, so that, if necessary, we would give up our life rather than give up our love for God.

And with all your mind. We are to love God with our intellect, with all the powers of our mind, bringing memory, thought, imagination, reason, judgment, and all our mental powers, as willing subjects to bow at God’s feet in adoration and love.

This is the first and great commandment. It is “first” in point of time, for it was binding upon the angels before man was created. It was binding upon Adam from the hour of his creation in the image of God.

It is “first” in importance, for there is no love for a creature worthy of comparison with love for the Creator. This commandment is also “great,” because it comprehends all others and because its demands are so great: namely, the whole love of our heart, soul, and mind.

Who can render to God this perfect love? None of our fallen race. Salvation by the words of the Law is clearly an impossibility, for we cannot obey even the first commandment. There is One who has obeyed it, and the obedience of Christ is reckoned as the obedience of all who trust Him. Being free from legal condemnation, they continually seek to obey this great and first commandment (as in the Revised Version) by the power of the Holy Spirit, who dwells within them.