It has always intrigued me that when Jesus recited the Deuteronomic Shema in Matthew 22 he replaced the word ‘strength’ with ‘mind.’ “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Well, we could easily make too much of this, and thus ignore the fact that all these elements together constitute a person’s whole being. But the inclusion of the word ‘mind’ does appear to be intentional by Jesus. (Wasn’t everything he did intentional?) R.T. France says this change perhaps emphasizes the need for our “intellectual commitment” to the Lord.
Loving the Lord our God is an intellectual exercise.
While it may sound pious and deeply spiritual to say, “I don’t know anything about God; I just know that I love Him,” this is hardly pleasing to the God who tells us to “take great pains” to garner his approval through the careful treatment of his word.
Likewise, the Apostle Paul tells us that “physical exercise is of some value but godliness has value for all things.” Godliness only comes as we wrestle with, agonize over, meditate on, and ponder the Scriptures, the grand story of redemption in which God was pleased to reveal himself to us on every page.
May God give us the grace to think. May we at Cornerstone be a thinking church, as we worship God by our songs, praises, gifts, obedience and intellectual commitment.
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