34But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38This is the great and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Note what Jesus said here. He was asked the great commandment in the Law. He did not answer with any of the ten. Why was that? Were the ten not important to Jesus or the Jews of that time? Well no. The ten were the words of the covenant. Ex 34: 28So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. Ten categories if you like. And there were, according to some, 613 commandments that made up these ten categories. The Jews of that time didn’t aim to keep the ten, they aimed to keep the law of Moses. And that to them was the first five books of the Bible, written by Moses, and all the commandments therein.
The term Ten Commandments is only found in the old testament. There is no reference to them at all in the new, expect where Paul refers to them as the ministry of death. You will find reference to particular commandments, but never to the ten as they appear in the old testament. The Greek text in the new testament refers to commandments, and it refers to law. Never to TEN commandments. Jesus gave MANY commandments in the new testament, but it is really interesting that He goes back to the old for what is now known as the two great commandments.
And on these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. The Greek word translated here as depend is κρέμαται (krematai). Can also be translated as hang, suspend. The whole law and the prophets, virtually the whole old testament, suspend from these two commandments. Rather than this being a summary of the ten commandments, it is a summary of the whole law of Moses, and the whole law of God. Concepts are here that are not included in the ten commandments; these two are all inclusive.
So you get the feeling that the lawyer was told you need to go even further than they were already doing. How could anyone love that much? Simple! Only God could and did! His Son gave His life to save us, to fulfil the law and the prophets. No one else has or could do that.
God is love. His law is love. Romans 13:10 Love is the fulfilment of the law. Jesus did that. He has commanded us to do the same.
Light of Christ 