The core of God’s commands

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 4
Q. What does God’s law require of us?

A. Christ teaches us this in summary in Matthew 22—

Love the Lord your God
with all your heart
and with all your soul
and with all your mind
and with all your strength.¹

And the second is like it:
Love your neighbor as yourself.²

All the Law and the Prophets hang
on these two commandments.

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references. Also, earlier and better manuscripts of Matthew 22 omit the words “and with all your strength.” They are found in Mark 12:30.

As Kuyvenhoven notes (19),

our Lord Jesus made the love-commandment the centerpiece of his teaching. In fact, his whole ministry was designed to teach us that love is God’s law, which everyone has broken, as well as God’s gift that enables all of Jesus’ followers to lead a new life.

Along with that, it must be said, his ministry was also designed to teach us what love really is, and to correct the false ideas we learn about love from our fallen world. We’re perfectly happy to believe that love is God’s law if we get to be the ones defining what that means . . . but we don’t.