When upon a certain occasion Jesus was asked which is the "first" or great commandment in the law, he answered his questioner by referring him to the Old Testament, saying, "What is written in the law?" He then quoted from the sixth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy: "Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: ... And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Thus it appears that he who spake as never man spake before, and who said that he came to fulfil the law, so comprehended the spiritual unity declared by the Mosaic Decalogue that he could with authority reduce the ten commandments to two, a first and a second, and then to one by finally declaring that the second is "like unto the first." How is this possible?
It will be interesting if we may comprehend in some measure the spiritual thought which enabled Jesus to see the fulfilment of all the commandments in this one, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." And to this end we may profitably follow the topics of the commandments in the order in which the Master himself stated them in his reply to the man who sought of him the way of eternal life. Jesus spoke first of idolatry, and it must be clear to every one that this commandment forbidding the making and bowing down to "false" or "strange gods" of whatever description, whether objects of wood and stone, or the more subtle forms of idolatry practised by a material-loving, material-serving civilization, is but a repetition or restatement of the first commandment. If this had been fully kept, the second commandment, forbidding the setting up of material objects of affection and worship, would never have needed to be written. Because Jesus knew that every form of materialism is idolatry, and that idolatry is simply digression from the first commandment, he saw that the second commandment would have its fulfilment in the first, which calls for a pure spiritual relation or union with the Father-Mother God whose nature is comprehended as Life, Truth, Love, Spirit; and the condemnation of idolatry calls for the putting off of the false condition which deprives man of the conscious enjoyment of that spiritual relation.
Jesus next referred to murder, which is also seen to be in violation of the first commandment. What is murder? From the standpoint of the first commandment man is spiritual; he is the image and likeness of God; he lives, moves, and has his being forever in Him; hence does not die. He inherits the perfect qualities that inhere in Deity,—everlasting life, truth, love. Murder is a departure from this divine order stated in the first commandment. It begins with opposite qualities,—anger, malice, hatred, revenge,—and from these springs the murderous act. The command, "Thou shalt not kill," could have arisen only by way of infringement of the truth,—the lie that man springs from matter and lives in matter, instead of Spirit, a lie which would dethrone and dishonor God. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" will become obsolete when the sin which it forbids is overcome through the conscious recognition and obedience of the spiritual significance of the first commandment of all, in which there appears no mortal in the flesh that can be hated or killed.
