Luke 10:27

Thou shalt love. The lawyer quotes from Deut. 6:5 (cf. ch. 11:13). Compare Matt. 22:36-38, where Jesus later gave the same answer to the same question put to him by another lawyer. The words of Deut. 6:5 were recited by every devout Jew morning and evening as a part of the shema‘ (see p. 57), and were worn also in the phylacteries (see on Ex. 13:9). Jews who had an insight into the inner meaning of “the law” (see on Deut. 31:9; Prov. 3:1) should have realized that its principles were not arbitrary but based on fundamental principles of right which might properly be summed up in the command “to love.”

To love God in the sense here stated and implied is to dedicate to His service one’s entire being, the affections, the life, the physical powers, and the intellect. This kind of “love” is “the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10), the kind of “love” in which a person will abide when he sets out, by the grace of Christ, to “keep” the “commandments” of Christ (John 14:15; 15:9, 10). In fact, God sent His Son into the world with the specific purpose of making it possible for us to keep “the law” in this sense and in this spirit. It is thus that “the righteousness of the law” is to be “fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:3, 4). He who truly “knows” God will keep “his commandments” because the “love” of God is “perfected” in him (1 John 2:4-6; see on Matt. 5:48).

Heart. Used here in the sense of “inclination,” “desire,” “mind.”

Soul. See on Matt. 10:28.

Neighbour. Gr. plesion (see on v. 36). Here the lawyer quotes from Lev. 19:18, where “neighbour” apparently means “a fellow Israelite.” Jesus obviously extends the definition to include Samaritans, and thus non-Jews (see on Luke 10:36).