When a Hebrew religious leader asked Jesus, “Which is the first commandment of all?” he answered, “The first of all the commandments is, 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” (Mark 12:28–30).
That statement emphatically conveyed the foundation of the Master’s ministry. The very basis of Jesus’ ability to heal the sick, raise the dead, and accomplish all his other marvelous works was his understanding of God, Spirit, as the one and only power.
This view challenged the beliefs in many gods held by other cultures of his day. But monotheism was not a novel idea for Jews. Jesus had grown up with this teaching, and his response to the scribe was taken almost verbatim from a passage in the Old Testament (see Deuteronomy 6:4, 5).
