Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30, NIV)

If you had a decent education in America, you should have learned that the educational model of the Western world was based largely on the Ancient Greece educational system of providing intellectual studies, artistic endeavors, and physical activity for all students. Much of our understanding of the educational structure of the ancient Greeks comes from the writings of Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC).  Aristotle was the finale among a dynasty of education: Socrates taught Plato who in turn taught Aristotle. Aristotle then taught one history’s most successful commanders, the undefeated empire builder, Alexander the Great.

Aristotle’s writings cover a multitude of subjects: physics, metaphysics, poetry, music, theater, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, ethics, and biology. From these writings, and the importance of the theater and the Olympiad games to that era of Greece, we can glean the basic educational structure of the Greek culture. They believed in the well-rounded education of the mind, body, and soul because these areas overlap in so many ways.

Intellectual studies often center on languages, logic, mathematics, and science. Many of these studies can also be used to help further our knowledge of the arts and athletics. But that knowledge is not achieved in a vacuum. Individuals must be involved in the arts and athletics in order for the intellectuals to better understand how fat converts into muscles through rigorous exercise; or how the overtones of a note, specifically at the highest tessitura of the overtone, can correlate to an arpeggio or even a scale, and specific combinations of these notes added in exact rhythmic locations can create sounds that are relaxing, captivating, compelling, or possibly agitating; or how various particles of pigment suspended in drying oils could be applied to a piece of cloth material that has been stretched, soaked, dried, and covered with a mixture of linseed oil, chalk, and gypsum in order to create a beautiful work of art.

This educational culture permeated throughout Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia Minor during the Greco-Roman empires. With it they carried the belief that their mind was the intellect, there body was the strength, and their soul was the heart, which was the seat of their emotions from which all artistic endeavors were birthed. Modern translations of ancient texts often use the term heart for emotions, but in reality the ancients assigned their soul or emotions to their gut or bowels. Therefore, a gut feeling actually meant a decision based on emotions rather than intellect.

Fast forward a few hundred years to the time of Christ. Jesus was only on the scene for a short three years, yet time and again he created a new paradigm in the way of thought. In Mark 12 we see the teachers of the establishment trying to find fault in the teachings of Jesus. During this exchange another teacher came up and heard how Jesus had answered their questions with great intellect. He chose to ask Jesus what He saw as the greatest commandment. Jesus responded that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

Beginning in verse 32, it looks as though the teacher is agreeing with Jesus.

 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (Mark 12:32-33)

There is only one problem; the teacher did not include the one, new aspect that Christ had brought before them. This teacher only accepted the teachings that he understood. He had been influenced by Greece as well; remember that the New Testament had been written in Greek because it was the common language of that era. This teacher knew that education consisted of mind, body, and heart (soul), so he could see how loving God in all three of these ways was of utmost importance. What he could not relate to was the subtle difference that Jesus made between the heart and the soul. That is why Jesus told him he was not “far from the kingdom of God.” (Mark 12:34)

Many believe that Mark 12:30 is simply a Greek rendering of the same commandment found in the Old Testament.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:5, NASB).

However the Hebrew words used in Deuteronomy for “heart, soul, and might” are actually a list of synonymous words intended to build emphasis about loving God completely. The four Greek words used in Mark (heart, soul, mind, and strength) have vastly different meanings. As explained earlier, the soul was the seat of emotions, strength referred to the physical abilities, and the mind described our intellect. These were all highly prized by the Greeks. These three words could be roughly synonymous with the Deuteronomy passage. But the fourth word makes all the difference here, especially to the Greek-educated, Roman-ruled populace of Jerusalem during the time of Christ.

The Greek word for heart (καρδία, pronounced kardia) refers to the physical organ as opposed to the “seat of emotions.” Jesus used this word first because it was meant to encapsulate the entire personhood of self-identity.  In other words, every thing that I am, my being, my brain, my body, my consciousness, my understanding, my breathing, my self, my EVERYTHING is all because of my beating heart that keeps me alive. It is in this that we are to love God. Not just with our educated, trained, emotional self, but we are to love God with every breath of our beating heart.

We are to love God with our waking thoughts, with our busy schedules, with our salivating thirst, with our exhaustive pants from energetic exertions, with our gurgling hunger, with our downtime, our uptime, our in-between time, with our joyous exuberance, with our mournful cries, with our bursts of enlightenment, with our shadows of despair, with our ins and outs, from end to end and back again, we are to love God.

Love is a verb. We can say we love, but without actions our words are useless. We cannot show love without attaching an action to it. God knows us better than we know ourselves. He still loves to hear us tell Him that we love Him. But more importantly, we need to tell others that we love Him through our words and deeds.

Appreciation is telling someone they are doing a good job or that you love them. Recognition is telling others about the good someone else has done or expressing your love for them to others. Many Christians need to quit appreciating God and start recognizing Him by loving and serving others because of our love for God.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13, NIV)

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. (1 John 3:16a, NIV)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, NIV)

Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth (I John 3:18b, NIV)

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. (Romans 12:9, NIV)

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and one Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:7-11)

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (1 John 4:16b, NIV)