The Greatest Commandment

Published on Updated on Commands

From the hundreds of commandments in the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ singled out the most important commandment of all.

 

 

The Lord Jesus Christ said the Shema is the most important of all the commandments:

Mark 12:29. Jesus answered, “The greatest is, ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one:

Mark 12:30. you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.

Matthew 22:37. Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

 

In those verses, the Lord Jesus Christ is quoting from the Old Testament:

Deuteronomy 6:4. Hear, Israel: the LORD is our God. The LORD is one.

Deuteronomy 6:5. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

 

Jewish people call those words the Shema. They recite it twice a day.

In 2012, a High School student named Anna Brooks was a teenager at Temple Israel of West Bloomfield, MI. In a fantastic video, she performs a breathtaking Shema that she wrote herself:

This was filmed by students at Temple Israel. Some of Anna’s classmates appear in the video along with her.

 

SEE ALSO

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The Lord Jesus said this is the second greatest commandment of all.

 

Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations on this page are from the World English Bible and the World Messianic Edition. These translations have no copyright restrictions. They are in the Public Domain.