“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
~ Mark 12:30 (GNT)
The Great Commandment, as translated above, is the imperative that must encapsulate all facets of the Christian life. The task of Christian discipleship, which is more of a quest for continual sanctification, requires a right head (right thought), right hands (right practice), and a right heart (right motive).
Jesus exemplifies each of these in the case of a woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8. The ruling Jews are testing Jesus, and the Lord must determine, through the Old Testament Scriptures, what kind of punishment this woman deserves. . The Old Testament law allows for stoning, but Jesus feels a double iniquity in this case.
Are the religious leaders so innocent, themselves?
At this point, Jesus gets to the heart of humanity’s problems. Within his mind, he is cognitively aware of the disparity between the self-righteousness of the Jews and the holiness of God. His heart felt it and his mind confirmed it. And his hands, with which he would practice punishment (throwing stones at her until he left her on the ground like a bloody pulp, lifeless and even dead) told him that, in this case, it was an unjust sentence.
However, Jesus does not completely acquit her.
Her wisdom dictates that she should, “Go, and sin no more,” to not only stop offending God, but, perhaps more important, stay out of the harshly punitive path of the Jews.
By modeling the right head, the right hands, and the right heart, Jesus is modeling the right relationship. He has brought together orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathy.
Orthodoxy is rational, orthopraxis is relevant, and orthopathy is relational.
As Christians we need to be informed in our mind, having delivered our thoughts to be commanded by the Lord. Our lives, having been transformed by the renewal in our minds, means that our hands are ready to do whatever is relevant. And our thought and practice are governed and affirmed by a heart that seeks only the Lord.
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Loving the Lord our God with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength requires a straight head (to think right), straight hands (to do the right thing), and a right heart (and to have the right motivation). This is our only task. Living the Christian life is neither more difficult nor easier than this.
© 2014 SJ Wickham.
Acknowledgment: This thought was inspired by Dr. Brian Harris, Director of Vose Seminary.