Article January 14, 2013 Issue

Love—the road to eternal life

For the Lesson titled "Life" from January 14 - 20, 2013

Kathleen Collins

This week’s Bible Lesson, titled “Life,” explores a question of interest to everyone: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25, citation 4). A lawyer—a scribe or teacher of the Mosaic law—asks this question of Jesus. Perhaps he had overheard Jesus thanking God for “hid[ing] these things from the wise and prudent” (verse 21) and wondered how he, a “wise” man, might fit into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus, sure of finding common ground in their mutual knowledge and love of the Torah, turned the question back to him: “What is written in the law? how readest thou?” (verse 26). 

The lawyer’s reply in the next verse is the basis of this Lesson: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart [Section II], and with all thy soul [Sect. III], and with all thy strength [Sect. IV], and with all thy mind [Sect. V]; and thy neighbour as thyself [Sect. VI].” Next to a marginal heading that says, “Practical religion,” Mary Baker Eddy refers to the command to “love the Lord thy God” as the “El Dorado of Christianity” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 9, cit. 3).

Christians are accustomed to hearing the two commandments in the lawyer’s reply as if they came from a single Old Testament verse, but the lawyer was in fact combining two separate laws from the Torah. The command to “love the Lord thy God” with one’s whole being, from Deuteronomy 6:5, is part of the Shema (the twice-daily prayer of affirmation in the Jewish faith that begins with Deuteronomy 6:4–9). And the command to love one’s neighbor, from Leviticus 19:18, is part of the “Holiness Code,” a name given to Leviticus chapters 17–26 because of their laws dealing with purity of behavior. 