Mark 12:28-34 | “What Is God’s Will for Your Life?”

Self the New Foundation for America

What is God’s will for your life?  What does God want from you?  Does God have specific things he wants from you, specific things that you should do? 

These questions all presuppose that there is a God whose will we can know.  This presupposition is increasingly rejected in our culture.  In the post-Enlightenment, postmodern culture of America, God and all external authorities are rejected and the self is king. 

Professor David Wells points out that all other civilizations had some kind of religious foundation, something that framed life by what is ultimate, something that gave people a sense of accountability to something other than themselves.  These religious frameworks shape how people live and behave in a society.  They connect people to one another and to something other than themselves.

Wells says, “Beneath our civilization…there are no such foundations.  We are building a civilization of the most marvelous ingenuity and intricacy, with its astonishing technology and enormous energy unleashed by its capitalism, but it is all rising over a vacuum.  Because this is the case, nothing remains but private interest.  There is now nothing more important for us, and nothing other than, the individual…All morality, mystery, and meaning are to be found in the self, not in God.”

Oddly enough, this rejection of God is happening in evangelical churches as well as the culture.  Consider these statistics: in 2015, 88% of American households owned a Bible, yet among Protestants, only 14% read it at least several times a week.  All this despite the overwhelming majority seeing it as the divinely inspired Word of God. 

If the Bible is the place where God speaks to us, why do so many Christians listen to God so infrequently?  Wells argues that it’s because we’ve come to understand the Bible as a how-to guide, a manual for how to get through life spiritually, a tool to help us get through the stresses of life.  He says that we’ve come to think this way about the Bible because we’re a product of our times.  We see God, if he exists, as existing for us rather than us for him.  Wells says that we’ve lost our “transcendent point of reference.”  The only thing over and above us is us.  We sit on the throne of our lives, and God and his word is only employed for the sake of our inner peace and outward success.

This is a fascinating and disturbing development in our culture and in our churches.  The question, “What is God’s will for my life?” is not even asked much anymore because we’ve inherited the cultural assumption that God’s will is for me to be happy.

But is that what God wants for us?  What does God say is his will for our lives?  Does the Bible give us any clarity on this question?  Indeed it does.  Jesus tells us what God’s will is for our lives while he was in the middle of debating the religious leaders in Jerusalem a few days before he was killed.

Context of Mark 12

Remember that we’re in the middle of seven conflict stories between Jesus and the religious leaders (11:27-12:40).  Jesus went to Jerusalem and the temple to confront the wicked and corrupt practices and leaders there.  He pronounced judgment on the temple, saying it would wither just like the fruitless fig tree.  He said that his authority to do what he was doing was linked to John’s baptism, where the Father declared him to be his beloved Son and filled him with his Spirit.  He then told a parable about how the religious leaders, the tenants of God’s vineyard, are going to be judged because they killed God’s beloved Son, and the vineyard will be given to others.  And he told them that they don’t understand the power of God or the Scriptures.

By putting these seven encounters side-by-side, Mark is making it abundantly clear that Jesus went to the temple to replace it and its leaders.  It must be brought down and replaced with a new “building,” a new place where people can meet God, and with new leadership.  Through Jesus, God is going to build a new house where his presence will live.  Jesus will be the foundation of the house and the new leader of everyone who trusts in him.

As we come to Mark 12:28-34, the fifth of the seven conflict stories between Jesus and the religious leaders, we’re going to see him engage a man who seems to be genuinely seeking truth.  In the exchange, Jesus tells us what God’s will for our lives is.  Let’s see what he says.

A Sincere Scribe

Verse 28 says that a scribe walks into the conversation that Jesus was having with the Sadducees.  He listens to them arguing, or “disputing with one another,” and sees the religious leaders getting owned by Jesus.  This is what “seeing that he answered them well” means.

It’s hard to know what this guy’s motives are.  They appear to be better than the others who’ve engaged Jesus in the temple courts.  Jesus seems to see a genuineness in his question (v. 34).  He seems to see a genuine desire to know what is true, to know what God wants, in this man. 

The scribe’s sincerity is why he ends up having a positive encounter with Jesus.  How we approach Jesus effects how he receives us.  If we approach him with humility and genuinely want to know him and know what is true, he receives us.  If we approach him, like all the other religious leaders, with pride and no real desire to know him, he’ll reject us.  The posture of our hearts as we approach Jesus effects how things will go.

Despite his sincerity, the scribe’s question reveals his misunderstanding concerning what pleases God.  He is a scribe, or teacher of the law.  Lawyers are always asking questions about which laws are most important.  The scribes had identified 613 specific commandments in the Torah, 365 of which were negative and 248 of which were positive.  The scribe wanted to prioritize the laws of God so he could measure his life against them and see exactly where he stood with God.  He wanted to see how he was doing with God.  He wanted to know if he was good with God.

A Straight-Forward Answer

Because he was sincere, Jesus answers his question straightforwardly (vv. 29-31).  In verses 29-30, Jesus quotes what’s called the Shema (from the Hebrew word “to hear”), from Deuteronomy 6:4-5.  These verses were for Jews like the Apostle’s Creed are for Christians.  They’re the standard summary of who God is and what he has done.

The first part of the Shema was included because this is the theology that undergirds the command to love God totally.  Because God is one, our love for him must be undivided.  Our obligation to love God with everything we are is because he is God, and he is one. 

The Shema piles up the terms “heart” and “soul” and “mind” and “strength” as a way of saying, “with your whole being,” or “with everything you are.”  The word “all” is repeated four times to emphasize the totality of our response of love to the lordship of God.  God the Lord lays claim on every single aspect of our being, of our lives. 

It’s also grammatically important to note, for reasons we’ll discuss later, that the Greek preposition for “with” that occurs before “all” means “from the source of,” not simply “by means of.”  We’re commanded to love God from our heart, not just with our heart.    

The scribe only asked for one commandment, but because Jesus loves to give more than we’ve asked for, he goes the second mile and adds the commandment to love our neighbor (v. 31a).  This command is a direct quote from Leviticus 19:18.

How Are Two Commands One?

Jesus then says, “There is no greater commandment (singular) greater than these (plural).”  Why does he call two commands one?  Why does Jesus put these two commandments together?  Why does he assume that they’re inseparable?  The simple answer is because obedience to the former produces obedience to the latter.  In other words, loving God produces love for neighbor.  Love for God is expressed through loving our neighbor.

The fact that Jesus adds the commandment from Leviticus 19 to the Shema means that it takes obedience to both to fulfill the will of God.  He says that obedience to the Shema means obedience to Leviticus 19:18.  More specifically, he’s saying that the primary way our love for God is expressed is by loving our neighbor. 

Jesus is saying that if we don’t love our neighbor, we don’t love God.  The apostle John makes this plain in 1 John 4:7-12, 20-21.  Love for God is what releases the love of God in and through us.  If we fail to love God, we’ll fail to love our neighbor as we should.  And if we claim to love God but don’t love our neighbor, then we’re hypocrites and liars.    

Who are our “neighbors”?  In the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, Jesus teaches us that our neighbor is anyone around us in need.  Anyone we know who has a need is our neighbor.  Our neighbors live next to us and also live with us.  They work and play with us, go to school and church with us.  This means that everyone we know is our neighbor because everyone we know has some need, whether perceived or not.   

How Do We Obey This Command?

We obviously cannot meet every need of every person we know.  So how do we know what to do?  What are some practical ways we can obey this command?  Galatians 6:10 is always a good place to start.  It says, “As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” 

Two things to notice here.  First, we are to do good “as we have opportunity.”  We can’t do all the good that needs to be done in our neighbor’s lives.  We can’t counsel everyone, have dinner with everyone, give financial help to everyone, or even pray for everyone.  We have to be strategic.  Wisdom would dictate that those closest to us deserve our first attention.  We shouldn’t love and serve people far away from us at the expense of those who’re right in front of us.  Our stage of life also needs to be considered.  For example, I don’t have the flexibility I once had as a single guy, or as a married guy with no kids.  My wife and three children are closest to me, so much, if not most, of my “neighbor love” will be to them and for them. 

Notice secondly that Paul says, “especially to those who are of the household of faith.”  Our neighbor love, as I said, starts close to home, and moves outward from there.  We start with our own families, move to our church family, then move to the world.  Many times we do this in exactly the reverse order.  We work to change the world but neglect our local church and the people right in front of us. 

For example, if you really want to go on a short-term mission trip but you don’t serve your local church in any noticeable way, your priorities are out of order.  This would be like seeing that your neighbor needs their yard mowed and getting on a plane and going to mow a complete stranger’s yard on the other side of the world. 

We’ll also often neglect our neighbors who’re right in front of us if they’re different from us.  But the parable of the Good Samaritan says that our neighbor is anyone around us who’s in need, even if they’re completely different from us.  So for example, if you’re a younger member of our church who hasn’t spent any time with our older members, or an older member who hasn’t spent any time with our younger members, you may be neglecting to love the neighbors that God has placed right in front of you.  The genuineness of our neighbor love is tested among the relationships that are right in front of us.  Stop and think right now: who in our church are you building a relationship with?  Are you building a relationship with anyone different from you? 

Our love for one another reveals our love for God.  According to Jesus, loving neighbors, not strangers, is how our love for God is proved.  The church is called to be a lighthouse of God’s love to the world.  Where else will the world see the love of God if not in the church? 

If you’d like more specific ways on how to love your neighbor, read Leviticus 19:9-18, the passage that Jesus quotes from, and look for next month’s newsletter article on this text.

The Scribe Agrees with Jesus

Back in Mark 12, Jesus responds to the scribe’s question by telling him that the most important commandment is to love God and neighbor.  Remember I said the scribe asked this question so he could see how he was doing with God.  In answering the way he did, Jesus lovingly tells him that any attempt to measure his life against the law will lead to disaster because the first and greatest law requires total devotion of every ounce of our lives to God.  Jesus says that God isn’t satisfied with anything less than complete devotion to God. 

Interestingly, the scribe agrees with Jesus (vv. 32-33).  He agrees that sacrifices to God aren’t as important as loving God and loving others.  This is intriguing in light of where Jesus is and what he’s doing.  He’s at the temple, the place where sacrifices were made, debating with the temple leaders.  And then here comes this scribe who says, “Sacrifices aren’t the most important thing to God.”  A leader of the temple says that there’s something more important than the work of the temple while standing in the temple courts!  He understands that the temple isn’t ultimate.  But his understanding doesn’t go far enough (v. 34).

Close, But Not In

The scribe had weighed Jesus’ answer and then realized that Jesus had been quietly weighing his answer.  Jesus says that the scribe is close to the kingdom of God, but not in.  It’s said that “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”  This is especially true with the kingdom of God.  There’s only “in” and “out.”  This man is close, but not in.  There’s still something keeping him on the outside looking in.  What is it?

It could be that he only saw Jesus as a “Teacher” (v. 32), and not as King, Messiah, and Son of God.  He understood what God wanted, but didn’t understand what God was doing in Jesus. 

It could also be that he was still operating under the assumption that obeying the law is what made him righteous before God.  Behind his question in verse 28 is the belief that if he is obeying the most important commandment, then he must be good with God.

What he failed to realize was that God gave Israel the law to show them that they couldn’t keep the law.  Yes, the commands ordered the national and civic and religious life of Israel.  And yes, the law kept sin at bay.  But the primary reason God gave the law was to show his people their sin, to show them that they needed a Savior (Rom. 5:20, 7:7). 

We Can’t Keep God’s Commands, But Jesus Did

This was a key point made by the Reformers during the Reformation.  They argued that God giving the law doesn’t necessarily mean that we can keep it.  This is why salvation is by grace, through faith, and not by works.  No one can fully obey God.  Think about it.  Can you keep the greatest commandment?  Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?  Do you love your neighbor as much as you love yourself?  We’ve all broken these just this morning. 

This is why obeying the commands of God does not make us right with God.  None of us have always obeyed the commands of God.  Only one person has ever perfectly loved God and loved his neighbor, and that’s Jesus Christ.  Jesus loved the Father and loved his neighbor with genuine and complete devotion. 

We’re like this scribe, trying to figure out if we’ve done enough to please God.  We feel good when we behave well and feel bad when we haven’t, assuming that God’s acceptance of us is based on our performance.  This is like trying to buy something that’s already been paid for.  Jesus, all the while, waits patiently for us to acknowledge the sufficiency of his sacrifice.  He came into the world to save sinners.  He bore our sins on the cross, receiving the penalty of the law for our sin, death.  All who trust in him are forgiven their law-breaking and given his law-keeping, so that God sees Jesus’ perfection when he looks at us.

Even though our culture rejects external authority and wants to set up self as King, the maker of heaven and earth has spoken, and his will is clear.  He wants us to love him with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves.  But he also wants us to see in these commands our inability to keep them.  He wants us to see our idols, those things we love more than God, and our neglect for our neighbors, and he wants us to run to the One who never worshipped idols and never failed to love his neighbor. 

The greatest commandment reveals God’s will, but it also points us to God’s grace found in God’s Son.

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