Perspective: The Image Is Everything

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The Image Is Everything

If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar.  If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see?  The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people.  You've got to love both.

1 John 4:20-21 (The Message)

Surely life wasn't made to regret

And the lost were not made to forget

Surely faith without action is dead

Let Your kingdom come

Lord, break this heart

From "The Power of Your Name" by Lincoln Brewster

As I noted previously, when Jesus starts shaking things up in Jerusalem, the religious leaders strike back by asking Him loaded questions in the hopes of getting Him in trouble in some way.  At one point, one of the Pharisees' religious scholars approaches Jesus and asks, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"¹

Jesus replies, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the greatest and first commandment."  Jesus is referencing part of a passage from the Book of Deuteronomy commonly known as the Shema, named for the Hebrew word for "hear."

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.²

The Shema is a passage of Scripture that is very important to the Jewish people, who recite it multiple times a day.  It is said at the beginning of Jewish prayer services and is thought to be like a creed of Judaism.  The Shema is the first passage of Scripture memorized by Jewish children, who are taught to say it before they go to bed at night.^{3 4}  It is not unexpected that Jesus would quote from such an important passage when answering the scholar's question.

Jesus continues, "And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"  Jesus is quoting part of a passage from the Book of Leviticus.

You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.  You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.⁵

Jesus then says, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."⁶  Basically, Jesus distills all the instructions found in the Jewish Law and all of the exhortations of the Jewish prophets into two rules that are simple but by no means easy to follow.  William Barclay suggests, "We may well say that here Jesus laid down the complete definition of religion."⁷  According to N.T. Wright, "Jesus' answer was so traditional that nobody could challenge him on it, and so deeply searching that everyone else would be challenged by it."⁸

I think it is worth noting that, though the religious scholar only asks Jesus which commandment He thinks is the greatest, Jesus offers him both the greatest and the second greatest.  Why would Jesus find it necessary to offer him both?  I wonder if maybe He simply couldn't offer him one without offering him the other.  I wonder if maybe these two commandments are inextricably linked, like two sides of the came coin.  Perhaps one cannot truly obey one of these commandments without obeying the other as well.

St. James references the Shema, the creed of the Jewish people, in his letter, perhaps with a bit of snark.  He writes, "You believe that God is one; you do well.  Even the demons believe - and shudder."⁹  In other words, evil spirits believe all the right things about God, but it's not really doing them any good since they have no intention of changing their ways.  James goes on to suggest that "just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead."¹⁰  Basically, it does not matter what you claim to believe if you are not living according to what you claim to believe.

James writes earlier in his letter, "You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"¹¹  James refers to the second greatest commandment as the royal law because it is the law emphasized by Jesus Christ, who is known to His followers as the "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."¹²  Perhaps James would agree that you cannot rightly claim that you "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" unless you truly "love your neighbor as yourself."

In my previous post, I highlighted a certain passage from the Creation poem at the beginning of the Bible.  I am starting to see that this passage has many implications for our lives.

So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.¹³

I think that maybe the truth that humans bear the Imago Dei, the Image of God, is what links Jesus' two greatest commandments.  In the words of St. John, "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen."¹⁴  We cannot see God, but we can see the image of God in our neighbors.

Barclay connects the worth of a human being to the image of God he or she bears.  He goes on to write,
Take away the love of God, and we can look at human nature and become angry at those who cannot be taught; we can become pessimistic about those who cannot make progress; we can become callous to those who are cold and calculating in their actions.  The love of humanity is firmly grounded in the love of God.¹⁵
In other words, no matter how worthless or unworthy a person might be according to worldly standards, the person is of infinite worth because he or she bears the image of God.  When we are tempted to totally dismiss someone, we would do well to remember that he or she is a child of God.

Christ commands us to love God with all we've got and to love our fellow humans as we love ourselves.  We love the God we cannot see by loving the children of God we see all around us.  At the same time, loving our infinite God enables us to love our fellow human beings who are of infinite worth.


Notes:

1. Much of this blog post is based on Matthew 22:34-40.  Quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.
2. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (NRSV)
3. Wikipedia: "Shema Yisrael"
4. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Volume Two.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  p. 324
5. Leviticus 19:17-18 (NRSV)
6. Matthew 22:40 (NRSV)
7. Barclay, p. 324
8. N.T Wright.  Matthew for Everyone, Part 2.  2004, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 93
9. James 2:19 (NRSV)
10. James 2:26 (NRSV)
11. James 2:8 (NRSV)
12. Revelation 19:16
13. Genesis 1:27 (NRSV)
14. 1 John 4:20 (NRSV)
15. Barclay, pp. 324-325

The photograph of the scroll is public domain.