Matthew 22:34-46

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

You heard it twice today, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Mt. 22:37; cf. Dt. 6:5). You might hear “heart, soul, and mind” and think Jesus is giving you a checklist. And you might hear the “all” before each of those as a gauge to measure how much is in each tank. So, you might check the ‘love tank’ of your soul to see if it’s full or if it’s running on fumes. Or, you might think it would be beneficial to siphon some fuel from your ‘heart tank’ to make up for the deficiency in your ‘mind tank.’

That way of thinking can send you down a rabbit trail and end up missing the point Jesus is making. For one thing, when Jesus talks about your heart, soul, and mind, He’s not talking about different ingredients that make up who you are. God didn’t take one part heart, one part soul, and one part mind, mix it together, and poof—there you are. That would leave out your body. When God created Adam, the first part He fashioned was Adam’s body; then, He breathed the breath of life into Adam (Gen. 2:7). God made a body first. The love He commands here is an action that has to be done with a body.

The Bible will regularly use each of these terms—heart, soul, and mind—to talk about you as a whole. Let me walk through each of these, but we’ll spend the most time on the heart.

When we talk about someone’s heart today, it’s usually the center of emotions. But that isn’t the way the Bible talks about the heart. In both the Old and New Testament, the heart is the center of who you are. It’s the place where you understand things. The Scripture does say that the heart has emotion, but there’s also thinking. Proverbs will talk about the heart of a man planning his way (Pr. 16:9). When people grumble after Jesus absolves the man lowered from the roof before healing him, Jesus asks them, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” (Mt. 9:4). After the shepherds visit newborn Jesus, Mary treasures up all these things, “pondering them in her heart” (Lk. 2:19). You can think of the heart as the center of who you are, the fountain of what you love and what you understand (Heb. 4:12).

Your soul is not a spare part added to your heart. Your soul is your breath and what makes you alive (Ps. 146:4; Gen. 2:7; 35:18; 1 Kgs. 17:21-22; Lk. 8:55; Jn. 19:30; Act. 7:59). Scripturally speaking, your mind doesn’t equal your brain. Your mind is where you think, but your mind also resides in the heart. In a sense, all three—heart, soul, and mind—are all of you. Your whole self.

But also know that your heart, soul, and mind don’t just sort of hang out inside of you. They move your body. Without the body, love can’t act. Don’t let the first and great command be something no one can see. You don’t keep the first and great command by feeling or thinking something about or toward God. That’s why Jesus doesn’t leave things there.

The lawyer asked for one command. Jesus gave him two. “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:39). This isn’t ust a bonus command or additional hobby for people who have finished loving God. The second is like it. The love that loves God with all the heart, all the soul, and all the mind doesn’t stay there. It spills out and loves the neighbor. The mouth speaks. The hands serve. That’s how your love for God becomes something that can actually be seen.

You love God by loving the neighbor God has given you, and you do that loving with a body. The second is like the first because the first was never meant to be invisible. Love of God that never results in love of your neighbor is a false love that does not love God with the whole heart, soul, and mind. A person who withholds love from the neighbor he can see is not loving the God he cannot see (1 Jn. 4:20). The two directions of love—love toward God and love toward neighbor—hang together. On these two, Jesus says, depend all the Law and the Prophets (Mt. 22:40).

That’s why you can’t hear these words without being convicted. You know the shape and direction of this love. If the love of God is something that only stays up in your head and never gets to your hands and out to your neighbor, that’s a problem. That is sin. We have a word for that—half-hearted. The heart never put the body to work. That leads to your neighbor only getting a meager portion of love from you. Half a conversation. Half a patience. Half a mercy. 

The Law doesn’t ask you to feel warmly about God in private and then do your best toward people. The Law demands all of you, aimed at God, and landing on the person God puts next to you through what your body does. You haven’t done that, not even on your best day. Repent.

Repent and remember what God does with these two great commands. He doesn’t love you from a distance. He doesn’t just think nice things about you while He sits up in heaven. No, the Son of God became your neighbor. He took on flesh and dwelt among us (Jn. 1:14). He took a body so He could do the love and not only think it. The One who demands, “Love your neighbor,” is the God who left His throne, took a body, and became your Neighbor.

Jesus wasn’t half-hearted when He loved you. He loved you with His whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind. That whole self took a body so He could love. Christ set His face to go to Jerusalem (Lk. 9:51) knowing what was waiting there. He went anyway.

Jesus’ mind was whole. He did not scramble while these lawyers tried to test Him. He pointed them to Himself as David’s Son and David’s Lord. The Messiah stood in the flesh before them. But they refused to believe and had no answer (Mt. 22:42-45).

Jesus’ soul was whole. On the night He is betrayed, He does not desperately cling to His life. He gives it to the disciples and His Church throughout all generations saying, “This is My body. This is My blood.” A half-souled man would have been arranging an exit. Jesus doesn’t.

Christ’s heart was whole, even when He asked in the garden, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me” (Mt. 26:39). And when the Father made it clear that it wasn’t possible, Christ does not waver. He prayed, “Not as I will, but as You will.” Then, Christ, your Neighbor, went all the way to the cross for you and for all who have not loved either Him or each other.

That is the love you could not see, made visible. God’s love for you didn’t remain a mood He had for you up in heaven. Out of His love for you, God came down. His love for you is revealed in a body in the ditch of your sin, hands that touch what is unclean, feet that do not turn aside, a face set to go to Jerusalem and to the cross to save you (Lk. 9:51; Is. 50:7). God loved you by becoming the neighbor His command describes, and He did it with all of Himself in a body.

Because He did that, you are not left to manufacture a sham kind of love out of a divided heart, a love that stays inside and never acts. No, you now draw strength from Him. Christ did not save a slice or portion of you. Jesus took a body, and He still has it. He used His whole body to save your whole body. And He gives His body to you today, so He will raise your whole body on the Last Day.

He saves you—heart, soul, mind, eyes, fingers, knees, elbows. He forgives the eyes that have looked where they should not. He has mercy on the fingers that tried to cling to what they should have given to others. He cleanses the knees that have bowed to other things. He restores the elbows that preferred to rest rather than do the work of love. He redeemed all of that. And He will raise all of that. His plan is to have you, all of you, forever.

Dear saints, now you live a life that is shaped by the love of God who has neighbored you. You love Him because He first loved you by coming near in a body (1 Jn. 4:19).

Loving the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul, and mind and your neighbor as yourself is His will for you. No, you won’t do it perfectly. The Law will still accuse you of what is half-done. But you are not left to try to climb your way back to God. You have been redeemed and saved by His great love for you.

Dear saints, you do not have a half-hearted Savior. When God became your neighbor, He was resolute. Heart, soul, mind, and body, all of it, for you. From that strength, love God. From that strength, love the neighbor He has given you with the body He has redeemed. He will keep the whole of you—eyes, fingers, knees, elbows, heart, soul, and mind—until you arrive at the resurrection and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:7). Amen.