You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. Luke 10:27
- Jesus said that these commandments sum up all the Law. Look at the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17. Can you find all ten in the summary above?
- J. S. Bach wrote a cantata about this text. In the cantata, one singer says, “God wants your heart by itself.” Why did Bach include these words?
- Secular humanists assert that God does not exist, and therefore they reject the authority of God’s revealed Law in the Bible. They consider human happiness and social justice to be the goals of human ethics, which they believe to have evolved through millennia of human experience. What is a fundamental difference between Law as revealed in the Bible and ethics as the evolutionary result of human experience? (You might find more than one difference.)
- In Bach’s cantata, one singer cries out, “Give me … a Samaritan heart.” What does the singer mean by this prayer?
- In the cantata, the alto sings an aria about a problem we all have. She sings, “Though I often have the will to fulfill what God says, yet I lack the ability.” When you are faced with this problem, what do you do?
Living On Tilt 
This is a very thought provoking commentary on this verse. Yes I can see Jesus’ commandments in the Decalogue…the first four relate to God and the following six to our relationship with our fellow man.
I believe ethics are emotional depending on feeling and God’s law is about His love for us.
When faced with a similar problem as that in the aria, I pray and ask God to enable me as I totally surrender my will.
I really enjoy these post of yours and they give me much food for thought. Truly these are inspired.
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I’m very glad that they are meaningful for you and other readers. I thank God for the opportunity to share what he gives to me.
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