“Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.” – Deuteronomy 6:4-5 NLT
The Shema and the Greatest Commandment
The Shema is considered the most important prayer in the Jewish religion. Traditional laws instructed devout Jews to recite the prayer twice daily––once in the morning and once in the evening. The prayer is a reminder of God’s centrality in the lives of His people and it exhorted His people to learn, teach, and obey His commandments in all areas of their lives.
The second line of the Shema is where Jesus pulls the most important commandment, the one which all the law and prophets point to: “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and [might]” (some translations say strength).
How Can I Love God?
Each of the ways we are instructed to love God speaks to a different area of our lives. Our hearts are the center of our passions. Our souls are the entirety of our physical and spiritual being. We are to be passionate about growing our relationship with God, considering how we relate and connect with Him both physically and spiritually.
But what does it mean to love God with all of our might? The word “might” (or “strength”) is a translation of the Hebrew word me’od. In other uses of this word, it’s translated as “much” or “very.” It’s the same word God uses to declare His new creation very good after He makes mankind in His image (Genesis 1:30). In the context of its usage here, the full word, me’odeka, can best be read as “muchness.”
Loving God with All of Your Muchness
That might seem like an odd sentence to us: “Love the Lord with all of our muchness.” But the idea is a powerful one. The Shema is calling us to not only love the Lord our God in all the ways we know how to do now, it’s calling us to consider how we can love God with all of the capacity that’s been afforded to us.
It requires us to see where our love can grow. As our lives change over time, it’s our privilege and responsibility to see how these shifts make even more space to love God in new ways. Just as there is no limit to God’s love for us, there is no limit to our ability to grow in our love for God! As we seek to bring His Word into our homes, teaching our families and friends about the ways of God, our love will grow.
Our hearts will deepen in our passion and desire for Him. We will find ourselves infatuated with the God of the universe. Our souls will feel completeness as we align ourselves physically and spiritually with His will. And the me'od—the muchness—of our lives will prove exceedingly abundant in the ways we show love for our Creator.
