Weekly Passages: Exodus 21:1-24:16; Jeremiah 34:8-34:22; 33:25-26; Matthew 5:38-42; 17:1-11.

Jesus taught that the entire Torah hangs on two laws, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves (Matt 22:37-40). These two laws are found in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, so this was not new teaching Jesus was giving.

However, it may have been an additional revelation to those listening to Jesus that all of God's teaching emanates from just two main principles. Simply put, the heart of Torah is the love of God, which he wants us to receive and to live by.

Unity in the Law

Last week we read the Ten Commandments. This week we read a wider range of laws and it takes some prayerful meditation to determine how the entire Torah holds together as a unity of love to God and our neighbour.

Judaism traditionally holds that there are 613 individual commandments. Though this is not necessarily a perfect count, it is certainly a good estimate. Does that mean that if we remembered hundreds of individual laws and earnestly obeyed them that we would be fulfilling the command to love God and our neighbour? Not necessarily.

Good though it might sound, this could easily become an act of the flesh – something we struggle and strive (and ultimately fail) to achieve in our own strength, without dependence on God. The spiritual gift of love is not so limited in its scope. If we receive it from God first, then we will find that Torah observance follows as a natural outcome.

The Heart Behind the Commands

Meditate on the laws in our Torah portion this week and see if you experience a response of understanding in your spirit that confirms Jesus' teaching. It is this spiritual response which naturally results in God's moral and ethical principles being lived out - including the precise laws that Moses codified, but also expanding into an infinite number of applications, stemming from the heart principles that the laws represent. The Sermon on the Mount should be understood in this way.

How important is this? Take Exodus 21:22-25 (for example). On face value this concerns the penalty for harming an unborn child in the circumstance of two men fighting. But that is too limiting. The heart principle here is God's love for children yet unborn and his exhortation that we too must be careful with the unborn child. If God's heart were understood through Torah principles, how would we ever have allowed the abortion of children in our nation?

As we read this week's Torah portion, let us ask God to show us the heart issues behind the specific laws - especially when they are relevant for today.

Author: Clifford Denton