In politics there’s what’s known as a single-issue party that campaigns for the vote of single-issue voters. They include single-issues like gun control, the environment, abortion and even animal rights. But Christianity is not a single-issue party.
Now it’s true that my home church has made it a tradition of quoting the Shema every Sunday morning:
We do this because Jesus, in Mark 12, agreed with a fellow Jewish teacher that this verse contains “the first and most important, of all the commandments.”
Why would a fellow Jew, that is non-trinitarian ask Jesus such a question? I mean it’s not like there were other competing Jewish believes questioning how many their “one God” was! I think the reason is because there are other commandments the Jew knew he had to keep like Deut. 13:
1 “If a prophet or someone who has dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you,
2 and that sign or wonder he has promised you comes about, but he says, ‘Let us follow other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us worship them,’
3 do not listen to that prophet’s words or to that dreamer. For the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul.
4 You must follow the Lord your God and fear Him. You must keep His commands and listen to His voice; you must worship Him and hold on to Him.”
So the Shema is only “the first” of many other commandments.
Moses, before and even after quoting the Shema, reminds his fellow Jews that God wants them to “Obey all his rules and commands” (again, plural). This phrase is continually drummed into the Jewish heart (i.e., mind) throughout the Old as well as the New Testament. Jesus himself famously alludes to it when he commands his disciples to teach their own disciples “to obey all the commands I have given you” in Mat 28:20.
At the top of the list of Jesus commandments is, of course, everything to do with the coming Kingdom of God on earth. After all, this was his mission statement according to Luke 4.43.
This is followed by all the NC laws Jesus taught from the famous “Sermon on the Mount.”
To this list I would add Jesus’ repeated teaching that he was the supreme representative for humanity. That’s why God has given Jesus “all authority to judge.” Not just because he is the anointed, authorized agent of God but more precisely because “he is human,” (huios anthropou estin) John 5:27! This status is reflected in Jesus’ favorite self-reference, the Son of Man; itself a Hebrew expression meaning a “human being.”
Jesus uses this expression over 80 times throughout the Gospels alone!
In fact, the humanity of Jesus is so important that later Paul warns “if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed” (2Cor 11:4) or “a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you” (Gal 1:8) they run the risk of putting themselves under a curse!
As the late prominent Finnish scholar Raisanen put it:
“The farther one moves from the Jewish-messianic roots of Christology, the more the humanity of Jesus fades.”
I think the reason the NT emphasizes the humanity of the Messiah, via “the Son of Man,” is to take us back to the most quoted and alluded to OT verse: Dan 7.13!
Many have seen and heard the echoes to this verse and another favorite OT verse, Dan 7:14.
Again, note the first part of John 5:27a:
“And he [God] gave him [son of man] authority…”
With the first part of Dan 7:14:
“And authority was given to him [son of man]…”
The 2nd part of John 5:27b tells you why:
“Because he is son of man [i.e., a human being].”
The same figure is so identified in Dan 7:13.
This famous prophecy from Daniel is also at the center of Jesus’ teaching regarding “the sign of the parousia,” that is “the end of the [present evil] age” in Matthew 24.
And last, but certainly not least, no list of Jesus commandments can be complete without the all-important parable of the sower in Matthew 13; Mark 4; Luke 8; and to a limited extent in John 4:31-38.
According to Jesus “If you can’t understand the meaning of this parable, how will you understand all the other parables?” Mar 4.13
My point is that Christianity is clearly not a single-issue religion. So it’s not a question about faith or works, feeding the poor or helping the widow, even the human Jesus or the “one God.” It’s all of the above and then some!
So let’s not “shrink back from proclaiming…the whole counsel of God,” as Paul commands in Acts 20.
And to “Look after yourselves and everyone the Holy Spirit has placed in your care.
Be like shepherds to God's church. It is the flock he bought with the blood of his own Son.”
Now it’s true that my home church has made it a tradition of quoting the Shema every Sunday morning:
We do this because Jesus, in Mark 12, agreed with a fellow Jewish teacher that this verse contains “the first and most important, of all the commandments.”
Why would a fellow Jew, that is non-trinitarian ask Jesus such a question? I mean it’s not like there were other competing Jewish believes questioning how many their “one God” was! I think the reason is because there are other commandments the Jew knew he had to keep like Deut. 13:
1 “If a prophet or someone who has dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you,
2 and that sign or wonder he has promised you comes about, but he says, ‘Let us follow other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us worship them,’
3 do not listen to that prophet’s words or to that dreamer. For the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul.
4 You must follow the Lord your God and fear Him. You must keep His commands and listen to His voice; you must worship Him and hold on to Him.”
So the Shema is only “the first” of many other commandments.
Moses, before and even after quoting the Shema, reminds his fellow Jews that God wants them to “Obey all his rules and commands” (again, plural). This phrase is continually drummed into the Jewish heart (i.e., mind) throughout the Old as well as the New Testament. Jesus himself famously alludes to it when he commands his disciples to teach their own disciples “to obey all the commands I have given you” in Mat 28:20.
At the top of the list of Jesus commandments is, of course, everything to do with the coming Kingdom of God on earth. After all, this was his mission statement according to Luke 4.43.
This is followed by all the NC laws Jesus taught from the famous “Sermon on the Mount.”
To this list I would add Jesus’ repeated teaching that he was the supreme representative for humanity. That’s why God has given Jesus “all authority to judge.” Not just because he is the anointed, authorized agent of God but more precisely because “he is human,” (huios anthropou estin) John 5:27! This status is reflected in Jesus’ favorite self-reference, the Son of Man; itself a Hebrew expression meaning a “human being.”
Jesus uses this expression over 80 times throughout the Gospels alone!
In fact, the humanity of Jesus is so important that later Paul warns “if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed” (2Cor 11:4) or “a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you” (Gal 1:8) they run the risk of putting themselves under a curse!
As the late prominent Finnish scholar Raisanen put it:
“The farther one moves from the Jewish-messianic roots of Christology, the more the humanity of Jesus fades.”
I think the reason the NT emphasizes the humanity of the Messiah, via “the Son of Man,” is to take us back to the most quoted and alluded to OT verse: Dan 7.13!
Many have seen and heard the echoes to this verse and another favorite OT verse, Dan 7:14.
Again, note the first part of John 5:27a:
“And he [God] gave him [son of man] authority…”
With the first part of Dan 7:14:
“And authority was given to him [son of man]…”
The 2nd part of John 5:27b tells you why:
“Because he is son of man [i.e., a human being].”
The same figure is so identified in Dan 7:13.
This famous prophecy from Daniel is also at the center of Jesus’ teaching regarding “the sign of the parousia,” that is “the end of the [present evil] age” in Matthew 24.
And last, but certainly not least, no list of Jesus commandments can be complete without the all-important parable of the sower in Matthew 13; Mark 4; Luke 8; and to a limited extent in John 4:31-38.
According to Jesus “If you can’t understand the meaning of this parable, how will you understand all the other parables?” Mar 4.13
My point is that Christianity is clearly not a single-issue religion. So it’s not a question about faith or works, feeding the poor or helping the widow, even the human Jesus or the “one God.” It’s all of the above and then some!
So let’s not “shrink back from proclaiming…the whole counsel of God,” as Paul commands in Acts 20.
And to “Look after yourselves and everyone the Holy Spirit has placed in your care.
Be like shepherds to God's church. It is the flock he bought with the blood of his own Son.”
