In the Gospel according to St. Matthew, in chapter 22 we hear the words:

Hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees came together in a body. And of them tried to catch him out with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest, the first commandment; the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. Everything in the law and the prophets hangs on these two commandments.”

Christ sets love as the greatest and first commandment, because love flows from the very nature of God. In Orthodoxy we have a theology called apophatic theology where negative statements are made about God—“God is not… God is not…”—reflecting the fact that our language and our rational concepts cannot contain God, because anything we say about God will be equally as untrue as it is true, because he is infinite and unknowable. The mystery of God cannot be captured in our language, and yet, in the first letter of St. John, chapter four, we read the words, “God is love,” not simply that God is loving, but God is love.

Love reflects the very nature of God himself, and when we love, yes, we imitate God in a small way, but we orientate ourselves to God and to life, and when we fail to love, we turn away from God. It sounds so simple, and yet it requires us to remove from our hearts and our lives everything that is contrary to God and everything that is contrary to love. Whenever we said anything in our lives in place, as a replacement, a substitute to God; whenever we place anything that inhibits our ability to love—then we must remove it. It must be gone from our lives, because it will prevent us from fulfilling the first and greatest commandment: to love.

Christ says to us, we must love: love God with all our heart, our mind, and our soul. The heart, in Hebrew and Greek, represents far more than just sentimental feelings. The heart is the very foundation of the dignity of humanity, the very dignity of what it is to be a human being, the seat of our will. Our soul, again in Hebrew, means more than just a spiritual nature; it is also something of blood. Christ here is inferring something about sacrifice: it will require sacrifice to love God. And the mind is our thoughts, our opinions, yes. Any thought that is contrary to the will of God, anything that is contrary to reveal truth, we must remove, we must challenge and reject. And the mind is also our culture, our science. Everything that we create must be offered to God. It must reflect our love of God. It must show something of the beauty and the glory of God.

Christ makes it very clear that the priority, the first commandment, is to love God, because not only is this in itself the most important commandment, but it also makes the second possible. Without love of God, we cannot love our neighbor. It’s true that we are all created with a natural love for our children, our parents, our friends, and so on, and this is good and this is blessed; this is given by God. But the kind of love that Christ calls us to here, divine love, only comes from God, and we can only experience this love when we love God. We only experience this love when God gives us his grace. It is through God’s grace that we are able to love as we are called to, and it is the priority not only in terms of the order of our love in the world for God and neighbor, but for our whole lives. It must come first in everything: everything we do, think; everything that we are.

In Jewish tradition, our neighbor was a fellow member of Israel, and Christ challenges this first with the parable of the good Samaritan. He says, “No, everyone is your neighbor, even those you may dislike, even those who may hate you, you find objectionable. You are to love them.” Christ says, “Every man, every woman must be loved by us.” It is a limitless love, because God’s love is limitless and infinite. And this is the divine love we are called to love with. It makes us vulnerable. To love someone who has hurt us. To forgive and love is a sacrifice. The image of this is Christ on the cross, of course. This is divine love in action. And to love, to truly love, may mean crucifixion, to make ourselves vulnerable. The world will tell us if someone hurts us we should put up the barriers, protect ourselves, but Christ says we must love and forgive. And love, Christ says, is the very foundation on which the law and the prophets hang. Everything rests and is based in love. Everything! Our life as human beings, and divine life; divine life and human life rest in love. They have their source, their being, in love.

We all fail, every one of us, when we reflect and look at our own hearts. We know we fail to love God with everything we are. We fail to love everyone around us. We carry hurts. We fail to forgive at times. God calls us to repent, to challenge these feelings. Reject them! To love as God loves. The challenge to every one of us is to judge our spiritual lives against the standard of love. Repeatedly, we must ask ourselves: Do I? Do I love God with all my heart, my mind, and my soul? Do I love my neighbor as myself? For every one of us will be judged by the standard of love.