The first commandment is this : "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." After giving two subtle answers to two rather complex questions, Jesus is approached by a scribe who also had a question. Surprisingly, the scribe’s question was not as complex, for someone who had grown up in a Jewish household could answer the scribe’s question. We are told that he approached Jesus with the question after watching him do a good job in answering the previous question(s). While we can conclude almost with certainty that the scribe was not putting Jesus to the test, he might have loved the insightful way in which Jesus answered questions. His motive in asking such a straightforward question must have been his eagerness to have Jesus offer some insight on the first commandment. And Jesus did exactly that.
Jesus did not only give the desired answer to the scribe's question, but he also expanded it or rather gave it a new meaning by adding the second commandment: the love of neighbor. Why this generosity? Why going the extra mile? Jesus knew that there was always an "over-emphasis" on the first commandment to the detriment of implementing it. It might have been the case that the people stopped short of doing what the commandment demanded. Yes, they had learned this particular commandment from their youth. They knew it by heart. As a matter of fact, they sang it. It was THE hinge around which their entire religious corpus revolved. The only shortcoming was that they failed to understand what the commandment meant or what it demanded of them. For according to Jesus, one could only keep the commandment by doing it. And doing it needed an object- an object to which the action would be directed. And that couldn't be God. No. It is the neighbor. It is in the neighbor that the greatest and first commandment can be grounded.