Bible Study series: Mark 12:28-34. The man who answered was not far from the kingdom of God.
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If you would like to see the original Greek, please click here:
At that link, I also offer more commentary and a Summary and Conclusion, geared towards discipleship. Scroll down to the bottom and check it out!
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Mark 12:28-34
28 Then one of the teachers of the law, approaching him, hearing them debating, and seeing how well he replied to them, inquired of him: “What is the most important commandment of them all?” 29 In reply, Jesus said, “The most important is:
‘Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one.’ 30 And ‘You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind, and with all your strength.’ [Deut. 6:4-5]
31 The second most important is this one:
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ [Lev. 19:18] There is no other commandment greater than these.”
32 The teacher of the law said to him, “You have well said the truth that ‘he is one and there is no other besides him.’ [Deut. 4:35] 33 And to love him with your whole heart and with your understanding and with your whole strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 When Jesus, seeing that he answered thoughtfully, said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” No one any longer dared to question him. (Mark 12:28-34)
Comments:
This is the fifth of six “controversy stories” between Jesus and the Jerusalem establishment (11:27-12:44).
28:
“teacher of the law”: It is sometimes translated as “scribe.”
Please see this post and scroll down to find the term, in alphabetical order.
Quick Reference to Jewish Groups in Gospels and Acts
29:
Jesus quotes from the shema (“hear!”). It was an important confession for Judaism, even today.
How does “one” relate to the Triunity (Trinity)? Please see the post about the Triunity in the OT, but for now I can say that the fullest revelation is that, yes, God is one in essence and substance and being, but he is exists in three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Trinity: What Are the Basics?
The Trinity: What Are Some Illustrations?
The Trinity: Why Would God Seem So Complicated?
The Trinity: What Does He Mean to Me?
However, systematic theology–though valuable and essential–is not the point of this wonderful verse. So let’s move on.
30:
“you shall love”: in vv. 30 and 31, the future tense in these contexts is equivalent to a command: “Love!” It is difficult to sustain love if we define it as a gooey feeling, so it must go deeper.
This verse talks about our love for God. Let’s first discuss his love for us. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
So what is God’s love like for us? Let’s explore.
So what is God’s love? It has a wide range of meanings. Let’s explore them.
The noun agapē is divine. It starts with God, flows from him, and is offered back to him with our lives. We cannot ginger it up with our own efforts.
The noun agapē is sacrificial. Out of his agapē, God sacrificed his Son for us, and now we sacrifice our lives to him.
It means a total commitment. God is totally committed to his church and to the salvation of humankind. Surprisingly, however, total commitment can be seen in an unusual verse. Men loved darkness rather than light (John 3:19), which just means they are totally committed to a dark path of life. Are we willing to be totally committed to God and to live in his light? Can we match an unbeliever’s commitment to bad things with our commitment to good things?
Agapē is demonstrative. It is not static or still. It moves and acts. We receive it, and then we show it with kind acts and good deeds. It is not an abstraction or a concept. It is real.
It is transferrable. God can pour and lavish it on us. And now we can transfer it to our fellow believers and people caught in the world.
God loves his Son and calls him beloved. God through Paul calls us beloved, too (Rom. 1:7).
“mind”: The Septuagint does not have the word for “mind” in Deut. 6:5. Jesus inserted it, though the Hebrew word for “heart” can also be interpreted as “mind” or the seat of thinking.
It may be difficult for members of Renewal Christianity to receive, but we can love the Lord with our minds, and not just our hearts. I belong to the Renewal Movements, and I know this anti-intellectualism from observing things first hand. The mind and thinking are downplayed too often, and people go astray easily, as they take flights of fancy through their revelations and words from the Lord. Don’t neglect your love for God through your mind or thinking.
Word Study on Spirit, Soul, and Body
Yes, be sure your mind is renewed (Rom. 12:2), but live a balanced life, body (strength), soul / mind, and spirit.
31:
In Luke’s version of the dialogue (10:25-37) the teacher of the law wanted to justify himself and asked who his neighbor was. That’s when Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The neighbor is the one in need. The surprise is that the one who answered to call to help the needy neighbor was the despised Samaritan, unexpected by the teacher of the law in the parable.
But caution! Luke’s version may be a different episode since it took place outside of Jerusalem; after all, it is reasonable to believe that teachers of the law, who obsessed over the Torah, would ask which commandment was the greatest or most important. In his comments on v. 28, Strauss highlights two rabbis who gave summations of the law. Hillel (40 BC to AD 10) said, “Do not do to your neighbor what is hateful to you; this is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary.” Akiba (c. AD 50-135) said: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself … This is the encompassing principle of the law.” And recall Jesus’s summation of the law: “Therefore, everything that you want people to do to you, in the same way you also do to them. For this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12). Garland also notes a famous passage in the Mishnah: “The world rests on three things: the Torah, sacrificial worship, and expressions of love.” Here Jesus ignores the sacrificial system, and places love above it, both love for God and love for the neighbor as the essence of the Torah. We can be sure that the teacher of the law in Luke 10:25-37 was different from the teacher of the law in Mark, here. But it is interesting to note how Jesus quickly attached the Parable of the Good Samaritan to the quotation about loving one’s neighbor.
Paul writes: “for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8, ESV).
Jesus said that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Self-love is natural and assumed. Jesus is telling us that we should learn to love our neighbors as we naturally love ourselves. Love does not necessarily mean we have affection for our neighbors. But we do kind things for them and treat them as if they are made in the image of God (and they are).
This verse comes to mind:
Therefore, everything that you want people to do to you, in the same way you also do to them. For this is the law and the prophets. (Matt. 7:12)
It is the Golden Rule. That verse explains how we love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
32-33:
The teacher of the law is perceptive. He boiled things down to their essence, even mentioning animal sacrifices. They are not as important as the law of love, love for God and love for your fellow man or woman. We learn from the Epistle to the Hebrews that animal sacrifices are done away with. Jesus himself will replace the Sinai Covenant, ratified by blood, with the New Covenant, also ratified by his blood.
See my post:
One Decisive Difference Between Sinai Covenant and New Covenant
Mark’s readers would have understood this verse to mean the abolition of animal sacrifices (Wessel and Strauss).
What Does the New Covenant Retain from the Old?
34:
Jesus observed or saw (either one is fine) that the teacher answered thoughtfully. The adverb is extremely rare in all of Greek literature, though it has its roots in the words about mind (see v. 30). Once again, people of God, think things through and reply mindfully, with your intellect. Recall, though, that the mind must be renewed (Rom. 12:2).
Jesus said: “Every teacher of the law who has become a disciple for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings forth from his storehouse new and old things” (Matt. 13:52). Who knows? Maybe this teacher of the law was converted to the resurrected Jesus and joined the large Messianic Jewish community of Jerusalem and Judea (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 6:7; 21:20). If so, then he made a great teacher of things old (Old Testament) and new (New Covenant).
It is good that one individual teacher of the law had his break-out moment, but as a class, Jesus is about to denounce them (12:38-40), and he expands on his denunciation of them and the Pharisees in Matt. 23.
He is not far from the kingdom indicates that he is on a journey towards it. We are also on a journey towards the kingdom, and once we have entered it, we are still on a kingdom adventure, a journey within the kingdom, with Jesus as our leader-pioneer.
Let’s review the kingdom of God generally.
As noted in other verses that mention the kingdom in this commentary, the kingdom is God’s power, authority, rule, reign and sovereignty. He exerts all those things over all the universe but more specifically over the lives of people. It is his invisible realm, and throughout the Gospels Jesus is explaining and demonstrating what it looks like before their very eyes and ears. It is gradually being manifested from the realm of faith to the visible realm, but it is not political in the human sense. It is a secret kingdom because it does not enter humanity with trumpets blaring and full power and glory. This grand display will happen when Jesus comes back. In his first coming, it woos people to surrender to it. We can enter God’s kingdom by being born again (John 3:3, 5), by repenting (Matt. 4:17; Mark 1:5), by having the faith of children (Matt. 18:4; Mark 10:14-15), by being transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son whom God loves (Col. 1:13), and by seeing their own poverty and need for the kingdom (Matt. 5:3; Luke 6:20; Jas. 2:5). The kingdom has already come in part at his First Coming, but not yet with full manifestation and glory and power until his Second Coming.
1 Introducing the Kingdom of God (begin a ten-part series)
Bible Basics about the Kingdom of God
Questions and Answers about Kingdom of God
Basic Definition of Kingdom of God
GrowApp for Mark 12:28-34
1. Jesus said we must love the Lord with our minds. Study Rom. 12:2, where Paul wrote that the mind must be renewed. How does one renew the mind and love God with it?
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10. Eyewitness Testimony in Mark’s Gospel
2. Church Fathers and Mark’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES
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