In the Gospel of Matthew, when the Lord is asked what kind of commandment is the greatest, He replies,

You shall love the Lord your God

With all your heart
And with all your soul
And with all your mind.
— Matthew 22:37

However, in Mark, when translating the Lord’s word—which He spoke in Aramaic (or possibly Hebrew) into the Greek in which the gospels were written—the Holy Spirit brings out a different shade of the Lord’s meaning:

You shall love the Lord your God

From all your heart
And from all your soul
And from all your mind
And from all your strength.
— Mark 12:30

And the differences in these two accounts are quite meaningful.

Matthew is the gospel of Christ as the King. In its account of the greatest commandment, it stresses our inward attitude toward the Lord, and so it tells us that we are to love the Lord our God “with” the different parts of our inward being. Also, it does not mention our will.

Mark, however, is the gospel of Christ as the Slave of God, and so here it speaks of loving God not only as an inward attitude, but of something manifested in what we do. That is why, first of all, it speaks of loving God, not “with” our whole heart, but “from” our whole heart.

(Note: Unfortunately, this important difference in the Greek prepositions is missed in almost all major translations, which use “with” in both cases, even though in Matthew the Greek preposition is actually en [which can mean “with” or “in”], while in Mark it is ek [meaning “out of” or “from”]. So far as I am aware, 0nly two translations, Young’s Literal and the RcV, maintain this distinction; the upcoming revision of the Standard Version will also include it.)

Second, it is why Mark speaks of loving the Lord “from our whole strength,” while Matthew does not mention the strength. “Strength” here refers, inwardly, to the exercise of our will, and outwardly, to the use of our physical body. Inwardly we are to exercise the strength of our will to make a decision to follow the Lord, and then, based upon such a determination, we are to employ the strength of our physical body outwardly to carry out what we have decided inwardly. This is to love the Lord “from our whole strength.”

Thus, when we put the accounts in Matthew and Mark together, we see that to love the Lord is first of all to love Him in terms of our inward attitude, but then we need to manifest our love for Him outwardly in terms of our practical, daily living.

Several years ago I heard a brother say that following the Lord is not a matter of our desire, but of our decisions. May the Lord grant us the grace to love Him with our whole heart inwardly, and to manifest that love for Him outwardly in how we choose to live our lives!

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—  8 October 2024 —