Mark 12 — The Greatest Commandment

Today’s Passage: Mark 12

Jesus is still teaching in the temple courts, and one after another His opponents come at Him. He begins with a story of tenants who beat the servants sent to them and at last kill the owner’s beloved son. Then the Pharisees and Herodians try to catch Him with a question about taxes, and the Sadducees come to mock the very idea of resurrection. A scribe asks a better question, the greatest commandment of all, and Jesus answers by joining together the words of Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. Then He turns a question back on them, asking how the Christ can be David’s Lord, and He warns the crowd against scribes who love to be seen. At the end He sits down and watches a poor widow drop in two small coins, all she had to live on. The traps are many, but the center of the chapter is one thing: love God, and love your neighbor.

As you read, hold this: Love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself.

Mark 12:1–12 (BSB)

¹ Then Jesus began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a wine vat, and built a watchtower. Then he rented it out to some tenants and went away on a journey. ² At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect his share of the fruit of the vineyard. ³ But they seized the servant, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴ Then he sent them another servant, and they struck him over the head and treated him shamefully. ⁵ He sent still another, and this one they killed. He sent many others; some they beat and others they killed. ⁶ Finally, having one beloved son, he sent him to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. ⁷ But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ⁸ So they seized the son, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. ⁹ What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. ¹⁰ Have you never read this Scripture: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. ¹¹ This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” ¹² At this, the leaders sought to arrest Jesus, for they knew that He had spoken this parable against them. But fearing the crowd, they left Him and went away.

The picture is plain enough to sting. Isaiah’s vineyard has been handed over to tenants who want its fruit but not its owner. The servants beaten and killed are the prophets God sent again and again, and the agapētos (ἀγαπητός) agapētos, pronounced ah-gah-pay-TOS. Strong's G27, beloved, dearly loved. In the story the owner has only one left to send, a beloved son, and the word is chosen on purpose. It is the same word the Father spoke over Jesus at His baptism and again on the mountain: this is My beloved Son; listen to Him. So the parable is telling us that to reject this Son is no mere quarrel between a landlord and his tenants. It is a refusal to love the Father who sent Him. son, sent last of all, is Jesus Himself. Greed does its arithmetic and decides that the way to the inheritance runs through murder, and so judgment falls and the vineyard passes to others. Then Jesus seals it with a line from Psalm 118: the stone the builders threw aside has become the cornerstone. The leaders understand exactly whom He means, and only their fear of the crowd holds back their hands. Before the first and greatest command has even been spoken aloud in this chapter, it is already on trial, for these men will not love the Son.

Mark 12:13–17 (BSB)

¹³ Later, they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to catch Jesus in His words. ¹⁴ “Teacher,” they said, “we know that You are honest and seek favor from no one. Indeed, You are impartial and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or not?” ¹⁵ But Jesus saw through their hypocrisy and said, “Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a denarius to inspect.” ¹⁶ So they brought one, and He asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they answered. ¹⁷ Then Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” And they marveled at Him.

They open with flattery, hoping to lower His guard, but Jesus asks them to hand Him the very coin they are carrying. Whose face is on it, He asks, and whose name? Caesar’s, they admit, and with that admission the trap springs shut on them instead. Give back to Caesar the coin that bears his image, Jesus says, and give back to God what bears His. And what bears the image of God is not a coin but a person. Caesar may have his taxes, but the whole of a human life belongs to God alone, for we are stamped with His likeness. They marvel at the answer, yet marveling is not the same as repenting, and they walk away unchanged.

Mark 12:18–27 (BSB)

¹⁸ Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and questioned Him: ¹⁹ “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man is to marry his brother’s widow and raise up offspring for his brother. ²⁰ Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died, leaving no children. ²¹ Then the second one married the widow, but he also died and left no children. And the third did likewise. ²² In fact, none of the seven left any children. And last of all, the woman died. ²³ In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? For all seven were married to her.” ²⁴ Jesus said to them, “Aren’t you mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? ²⁵ When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. They will be like the angels in heaven. ²⁶ But concerning the dead rising, have you not read about the burning bush in the Book of Moses, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? ²⁷ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”

Their riddle about a woman married in turn to seven brothers is built to make the resurrection sound ridiculous. Jesus answers that they have gone wrong in two ways at once: they do not know the Scriptures, and they do not know the power of God. The life to come is not simply this life stretched out longer, with the same marriages carried into it, for those who rise will be like the angels in heaven. And then He points them back to the burning bush, where God does not say that He was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob but that He is their God, still, long after they died. He is not the God of the dead but of the living, and to Him the patriarchs are alive. The God we are commanded to love with all our heart is the living God, and a picture of Him small enough to argue away is too small to love.

Mark 12:28–34 (BSB)

²⁸ Now one of the scribes had come up and heard their debate. Noticing how well Jesus had answered them, he asked Him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” ²⁹ Jesus replied, “This is the most important: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. ³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” ³² “Right, Teacher,” the scribe replied. “You have stated correctly that God is One and there is no other but Him, ³³ and to love Him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, which is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” ³⁴ When Jesus saw that the man had answered wisely, He said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to question Him any further.

At last a genuine question, and Jesus gives it a full answer. He joins the daily prayer of Israel, love the Lord your God, to the old command of Leviticus, love your neighbor as yourself, and He binds them together as the greatest commandments of all. Heart and soul and mind and strength: no corner of a person is left out. And the second command is no gentle suggestion about being kind when it suits us, for it carries the weight of the law and the name of God behind it. The scribe agrees warmly and says that to love God and neighbor is worth more than all the offerings on the altar, and Jesus tells him he is not far from the kingdom of God. That is real praise, and it is also unfinished business, for near the kingdom is not yet inside it. The last step is to give full allegiance to the King who is standing in front of him. After this the traps fall silent, and Jesus goes on teaching on His own terms.

Mark 12:35–44 (BSB)

³⁵ While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, He asked, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? ³⁶ Speaking by the Holy Spirit, David himself declared: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand until I put Your enemies under Your feet.”’ ³⁷ David himself calls Him ‘Lord.’ So how can He be David’s son?” And the large crowd listened to Him with delight. ³⁸ In His teaching Jesus also said, “Watch out for the scribes who like to walk around in long robes, to receive greetings in the marketplaces, ³⁹ and to have the chief seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. ⁴⁰ They defraud widows of their houses, and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will receive greater condemnation.” ⁴¹ As Jesus was sitting opposite the treasury, He watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large amounts. ⁴² Then one poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a small fraction of a denarius. ⁴³ Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. ⁴⁴ For they all contributed out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

Now Jesus asks a question of His own, drawing on Psalm 110, where David himself calls the coming Messiah his Lord. To say the Christ is the son of David is true, but it is not the whole truth, for David’s own son is also David’s Lord, seated at the right hand of God. Then comes a warning about the scribes, who love the long robes and the greetings and the best seats, who devour widows’ houses even while they make a show of their long prayers; for such men, Jesus says, the judgment will be all the heavier. And then, as carefully as He once watched the fig tree, He sits down and watches the temple treasury. The rich pour in large sums out of what they can easily spare, and a poor widow drops in two small coins that were everything she had to live on. Heaven keeps its accounts by love and not by noise, and so she has given more than all of them. In a chapter crowded with clever men laying traps, the one who truly honors God is this widow, who trusts Him with all she has. Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor: she has done both, and it cost her two small coins and her whole living.