What Is the Greatest Commandment?

By the time of Jesus, Jewish teachers counted 613 commandments in the law of Moses, and they often debated which ones weighed most. So when a lawyer wanted to test Jesus, he asked the obvious question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” (Matthew 22:36). Jesus answered without hesitating:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

Matthew 22:37–40

The short answer: according to Jesus, the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Neither is one of the Ten Commandments: both come from elsewhere in the law of Moses (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18). Jesus chose them because they sum up everything else. The first four of the ten spell out love for God, and the last six spell out love for neighbor. See The Ten Commandments: What Each One Means.

Jesus did not invent a new rule. He took two commandments every Jewish listener already knew and joined them. The first comes from the Shema, the prayer devout Jews said every morning and evening: “Hear, Israel: the LORD is our God. The LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5). The second is tucked into a list of practical laws:

You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:18

Other teachers of the time thought along similar lines. A famous story in the Talmud tells of a man who asked the rabbi Hillel to teach him the whole law while standing on one foot. Hillel replied: what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole law, and the rest is commentary (Shabbat 31a). Rabbi Akiva called “love your neighbor as yourself” a great principle of the law.

In Mark’s account, the scribe who asked the question agreed with Jesus and added that these two are worth more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices. Jesus told him, “You are not far from God’s Kingdom” (Mark 12:34). What was new in Jesus’ answer was not the two commands but the claim that everything else hangs on them.

The two great commandments map neatly onto the ten. The first four commandments (no other gods, no idols, God’s name, the Sabbath) are what loving God with all your heart looks like in practice. The last six (honoring parents, and no murder, adultery, theft, false witness or coveting) are what loving your neighbor looks like. Christian tradition has long spoken of the “two tables” of the law in exactly this way.

Paul makes the same point from the neighbor’s side. After listing the commandments against adultery, murder, stealing and coveting, he says they “are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Romans 13:9). The ten are not replaced by love. They show what love does and refuses to do.

That is also why the order matters. Love for God comes first, not because people matter less, but because what we love most shapes how we treat everyone else. (The Ten Commandments in Order follows the two halves through the list.) And it is why the Ten Commandments still matter to Christians, as Do Christians Have to Keep the Ten Commandments? explains.

In Luke’s Gospel the conversation goes one step further. A lawyer agrees with the two commandments, then asks the question that tests them: “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). Jesus answers with the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man is beaten and left on the road. A priest and a Levite pass by. A Samaritan, from a people the listeners despised, stops, treats his wounds and pays for his care.

Jesus then turns the question around: which of the three “seems to you to have been a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36). The lawyer wanted to know how far his duty reached. Jesus told him to become a neighbor to whoever was in front of him.

The two commandments cannot be separated. John puts it bluntly: “If a man says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20). Love for God that never reaches the person next to you is not the love Jesus meant, and love for neighbor that never looks up to God loses its foundation.

Jesus gave his disciples one more commandment on the night before he died, and it raised the bar again:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just like I have loved you; you also love one another.

John 13:34

“As yourself” became “as I have loved you.” A few ways to put the greatest commandment into practice:

• Love God with your whole self. Heart, soul, mind and strength: feelings, life, thinking and effort. Ask which of the four you tend to leave out.
• Treat love as something you do. In the Bible love is commanded, which means it is more than a feeling. You can choose to act in love before you feel it.
• Start with the nearest neighbor. The Samaritan did not go looking for someone to help. He stopped for the person on his road.
• Use the ten as a check. If your love for God or neighbor is real, it will show in the concrete ways the Ten Commandments describe.

Jesus said the whole law hangs on these two. That makes them the simplest commandments to remember, and the hardest to finish keeping.

What is the greatest commandment?

Jesus said the greatest commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). He quoted Deuteronomy 6:5, from the Shema, the central prayer of Judaism.

What is the second greatest commandment?

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), quoted from Leviticus 19:18. Jesus said the whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

Where is the greatest commandment in the Bible?

In the New Testament, Jesus names it in Matthew 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–34 and Luke 10:25–28. In the Old Testament, the two commandments he quotes are Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.

Is the greatest commandment one of the Ten Commandments?

No. Neither of the two great commandments is among the ten, but together they sum them up. The first four of the Ten Commandments show how to love God, and the last six show how to love your neighbor.

What is the new commandment Jesus gave?

On the night before his death, Jesus told his disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just like I have loved you; you also love one another” (John 13:34). It sets his own love as the measure.