When Jesus was asked by a scribe, “Which is the first commandment of all?” (Mark 12:28), He replied by quoting from the Old Testament:

The first is,

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord!
And 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 12:29-30; cf. Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27, Deuteronomy 6:5, 10:12, 30:6

When we consider this verse carefully, we see that the Lord is showing us here that our love for God must involve every part of our being.

To understand this we must be clear, first of all, that in the Bible, our “heart” refers to the totality of our inward being; that is, it speaks of the combination of our spirit and our soul. So, when this verse refers to our “heart,” it includes our human spirit, in an indirect way, in the matter of loving the Lord.

But, why doesn’t it mention the spirit directly when telling us how we should love God? Because, in the Bible, our spirit is not the organ by which we love God. Rather, it is the organ God has given us for receiving His divine life (John 3:6). Once we receive God’s life in our human spirit, then we can love Him in our soul. Our soul is who we are, so that is the part of our being that loves God, and why this verse tells us we are to love God “from all [our] soul.”

This distinction between the functions of our spirit and our soul is quite a crucial, but few Christians adequately appreciate it. So, to make it more clear, let me pass along an illustration from Witness Lee, which I remember reading years ago in one of his books.

Not long after he came to this country in the early 60’s, he was having dinner at the home of a certain couple and trying to help them see the difference between our spirit and our soul and the distinct functions they have in our relationship with the Lord.

The wife was somewhat bothered by this, because she felt, “Isn’t it enough for us to just love the Lord? Why does it matter whether we have a spirit or not, and whether it’s different from our soul? Let’s just love the Lord, that should be good enough.” She wasn’t happy that Brother Lee was saying that, no, to go on with the Lord in the best way we really need to be clear about the distinction between these two different parts of our being.

So, they had their dinner together, and then the wife was serving dessert, perhaps some apple pie, and Brother Lee took it. And then he asked the husband, “Do you love apple pie?” The husband said he did; who doesn’t love a good piece of apple pie? And so he tried to reach for it with his hand and take a piece, but Witness Lee held it back. He said, “No, no, no, you don’t need to take the pie with your hand. You love this apple pie with your heart. That’s all you need; take it with your heart! Why does it matter whether or not you have a hand to take the pie, and whether or not you have a mouth to receive the pie into you? It’s good enough that you have a heart to love the apple pie.”

Through this very practical example, this couple, and the wife in particular, did get a good deal of help about the difference between our spirit and our soul: our human spirit enables us to receive God as life, and this causes us to love God in our soul.

In brief, our spirit is the receiving organ within us while our heart is the loving organ. So, that is why our human spirit, while it is one of the three basic parts of our being, together with our soul and our body (1 Thess. 5:23) is not mentioned directly in Mark 12:30 in regard to loving God.

Being clear about this distinction should be a great help to us, practically speaking, in developing our love relationship with the Lord. If we are clear about it, then we will realize our need to take the time to open to the Lord and receive Him as life into our spirit so we can then love Him as we should in our soul.

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—  21 December 2024 —