Marturia

Mark 12:30 Love your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. In other words throw your whole self into loving God.

Love God with all of your:

1) Heart - emotions (thoughts, feelings)

2) Soul - spirit (breath, vitality, life)

3) Mind - intellect (deep thought, faculty, disposition, imagination, understanding)

4) Strength - body (force (-fulness), ability, might, power)

When you look these up in the Strong's Greek/Hebrew Dictionary you will see that these things are integrated into each other. Their definitions overlap some. They go together, each one affects the others.

Mark 12:31 Love your neighbors as you love yourself. If we all do that there would be no gossip, no theft, jealousy, hatred, murder, etc. We would each only wish and do our neighbors well.

The word love in the above verses (love for God and your neighbor) is the word agapao (ag - ap - ah' - o) to love (much), in a social and moral sense. Compare to: phileo (fil - eh' - o) to be a friend, fond of, have affection for (denoting persoanl attachment), while agapao is wider, embracing the judgement and deliberate assent of the will as a matter of principle, duty and priority, the two stand related. Phileo is of the heart and agapao is of the head.

We love our neighbors as ourself because we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. It is an act of our decision to do so because we love God and desire to obey Him and His Word. If we love God we will love our neighbor. If we call this commandment into question we would then have to call our complete love of God into question as well. We cannot separate the two.

These two commands cover all the bases. Love God with all that you are and love your neighbor as you love yourself. No one is left out of that kind of love. If we truly love God with our whole being how can we not love our neighbor who is created in His image just as we ourselves are?