The Ultimate Commandment

When teaching about the Ten Commandments, I made sure to include the fact that all ten commandments (and all the other commandments) can be summed up in only two basic rules.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Matthew 22: 37-40

Those two commandments, Love God and Love Thy Neighbor, incorporate every other commandment ever given. And they, together, show that all of our actions should be motivated by one guiding principle: Love. Every commandment is an invitation to show love, and if we truly feel a strong love for God and our fellowman, that love will motivate us to keep those other commandments.

But while I might describe love as the ultimate commandment in that it includes all other commandments, it's still important to learn what those other commandments are. We may have the general idea of the Gospel down, but we still need to understand the details to make sure we apply that idea appropriately. We can't pretend that we only need to keep one or two of the commandments and interpret them however we want. It is essential to learn and keep all of the commandments, even though there are countless of them and all of them hang on the first two.

But still, while we attempt to learn and master all of the commandments God has given us, we can try to apply their core guiding principle in our daily lives. Love can be our axiom. We must try to keep all the commandments, but that task becomes easier when we realize that they all branch out from the core principle of love.