Do you ever feel like thousands of priorities are clamoring for top billing in the story of your life? At times it can feel like our priorities are choosing us, rather than us choosing our priorities. Some people call that “the tyranny of the urgent.” Whatever we put first has a huge impact on our lives, so it makes sense to be intentional about it. The importance of choosing a top priority is nothing new—Jesus had a key conversation about that very issue.

Not All Priorities Are Created Equal

A scribe (a teacher of the Law) asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” (Mark 12:28*). Tradition says there are 613 commandments in the Torah, and this guy wanted to see which one Jesus would pick. While it might seem like he was asking a strictly religious question, the scribe really wanted to know what Jesus considered the most important thing in life. That was (and still is) a monumental question for anyone—whether we consider ourselves religious or not.

Some priorities are temporary. They require our focused time and effort for just a day or a season. But our most important priorities are deeper and higher than the rest. You might even say they are ultimate priorities—because they reflect and even shape who we are.

So, how does Jesus answer the question of the top or ultimate priority?

Jesus answered, “The most important [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these . . . On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Mark 12:28–34; Matthew 22:40)

Jesus answers by quoting the Shema directly from Deuteronomy 6:4 as the most important commandment of all, and he throws in a bonus by quoting Leviticus 19:18 as the second most important commandment. So if you’ve found yourself feeling drawn to Jesus, but are concerned that following him would somehow throw shade on your Jewishness, this is a good starting place for putting that concern to rest.

Other than the fact that Yeshua’s (Jesus’) answer is very Jewish, what do you make of it? A careful look at what he says can produce some very mixed feelings.

Ultimate Priorities Are Rooted in Love

Our priorities will always be rooted in what or who we love the most. And who doesn’t like the idea of love as the driving force behind our priorities?

Here’s where most of us tend to get stuck: the Torah portions that Jesus quotes don’t just say, “You shall love.” They tell us who to love (God and our neighbors), and to what extent we should love (love God with everything we are and everything we’ve got and love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves).

But who can actually do that? Where do we get that kind of all-encompassing love? We don’t seem to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength by nature—so if we are not intentional about what we love the most, it’s never going to be God. And yet, we can’t force ourselves to love God through a sheer act of the will or by following a list of “dos and don’ts.” And even if we could, would we want to?

Many people aren’t even sure if God exists, and others believe in a vague, remote concept of God. Either way, loving him above everything can seem premature and/or way too personal. Others may wish to love God fervently and may have tried very, very hard to do so, growing more and more discouraged in the attempt. Even for those of us who both believe and want to love God, it’s surprisingly hard to do!

The good news is, God wants us to succeed in loving him—and he can make it possible!

It’s just so much easier to love other things. We love our material possessions, our reputations, our accomplishments, our pets, or … you name it. Loving things we can see is always easier than loving the invisible God who created us. But then, we can see our neighbors. And that can make them even harder to love! Our neighbors can get on our nerves or do dumb things. They can be selfish. Just like us.

So, in sum, Jesus’ two top priorities are daunting. In fact, the more deeply we focus on their implications, the more impossible they may seem.

The good news is, God wants us to succeed in loving him—and he can make it possible!

The Ultimate Value of Loving God

There’s a word for loving something or someone with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength: worship. Our identity, as well as our potential, is all tied up with what we worship—and we all worship something or someone. If you want to know what you worship, ask yourself what you are most afraid of losing and what you invest most of your time and energy pursuing. Whatever we fight hardest to defend, whatever occupies most of our attention, will lead us to the thing we ultimately value (worship). What we worship is our top priority, and it determines how we prioritize everything else. What we worship not only makes a statement about who we are, but it continues to shape who we are becoming.

It’s not just our own identity, but God’s identity that we are dealing with when we worship. That’s why Jesus didn’t just quote the action of loving God in the commandment; he quoted the command to hear who God is: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The Lord is not just some vague or remote being; the Lord is our God. Jesus was reiterating that worshiping anything other than God denies God’s identity as the One who deserves our ultimate love. If we deny who God is, we deny who we are meant to be: people made in God’s image to be in a loving relationship with Him.

Human beings have a natural tendency to take something or someone good and value it more than we value God. But when we do, that good thing or that good person will always disappoint us. We can’t expect anything or anyone to do or be what God wants to do and be for us.

We can only love God with our whole selves if we truly see His beauty and goodness and realize that nothing and no one—no matter how wonderful—is more deserving of our love. And when we don’t see it, God, in His great love, will deal patiently with our uncertainties if we really want to know Him.

The wonderful thing is when we do begin to love God as we were meant to, we don’t stop there. In becoming like him, we learn to love what God loves, including justice, mercy, and the beneficiaries of those things—namely, other people. Loving God is the key to loving our neighbor.

The very fact that God wants us to prioritize love—first love for him, and then love for other people—speaks volumes about who he is. God values our love because he values us. And the loving relationship he wants to have with us elevates every aspect of our lives. Everything God wants us to do (or refrain from doing) is based on love for him and for other people.

So Where Will You Go From Here?

If you find yourself feeling at odds with the command to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and/or it feels impossible to love your neighbor as yourself, you are not alone! Or maybe you are feeling the heavy burden of failed attempts to truly love God.

The more we read Jesus’ words and see how he related to people, the clearer it becomes that he actually is drawn to those of us who realize that we have failed God and have failed our neighbors. And he offers us hope for changes that go infinitely beyond what we can do on our own.

Questions for reflection:

• Have you ever stopped to think about what you truly love more than anything else?
• If not, do you see the value of doing that now?
• If you are uncertain whether God is worthy of your ultimate love and worship, would you want to know if you could?

*Mark, John, Matthew, and Luke are the names of the New Testament books that tell about the life and teachings of Jesus. They are also referred to as the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of John, etc. Parenthetical references following quotes from or narratives about Jesus are citing verses from those books.