| mark 12:29-31 |
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Using the word agapeo (accurately understood as the act of deeply, intimately cherishing), Jesus defines for a conservative Jewish fundamentalists party (that is, the Pharisees) the entire nature of God, through the summary of His Word, and mankind's role in this grand definition: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
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| love |
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Using the word agapeo (accurately understood as the act of deeply, intimately cherishing), Jesus defines for a conservative Jewish fundamentalists party (that is, the Pharisees) the entire nature of God, through the summary of His Word, and mankind's role in this grand definition: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
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| heart |
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The word Jesus used for "heart" is kardia which is literally translated as the "seat" or "fountain" ("wellspring") of one's entire collection of thoughts, passions, appetites, affections, purposes, intelligence, sensibility, and pursuits; in other words, it is a word that completely defines all human behavior, not merely the emotional endeavors but all endeavors in their entirety.
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| soul |
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Proceeding, Jesus then uses the word psoo-khay, translated as "soul" in the English; however, this word is difficult to understand in our post-modern American culture as the word, in its literal definition as "breath," is a reference to God's original method of bringing life into His final creation -- that is, mankind. It is a word that does not leave room for philosophical debate or existential doubt; rather, it is a word that assumes the conclusion that there is something beyond the being and it is with this entity that mankind is differentiated between other species as this entity -- and only this entity -- will stand trial before God.
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| mind |
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Lastly, Jesus uses the word "mind" or dee-an-oy-ah, which is a difficult word to translate. Some scholars have translated it as "immagination" for it is a word that attempts to describe not merely the mind and its thought but the thought behind the mind that originates the thought; it is a word that attempts to confine the thought behind the thinker and the reason behind the reason, pinpointing the origin of the entirety of our rational being.
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| inner lives |
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As such, Christ summarizes the entire nature of God and our relationship with Him by commissioning all mankind to love Him with all his or her heart, soul, and mind. In other words, Jesus is not asking man to love God with their outer lives -- the words of their mouth, their songs, their going-to-church, their wearing-the-Christian-bracelet, their listening-to-Christian-songs, their image -- but Jesus is asking man to love God with all of his or her inner life; the command is to love God, not merely with that which is a part of us but that which is within us, and utmost within us at that. It is a commission to love God with our inner lives.
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| ministry |
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Inner Life is devoted to doing just that: as our inner lives -- our hearts, our souls, and our minds -- are often tainted by sin, discouragement, pain, regret, shame, uncertainty, loneliness, and incompleteness, iLife is designed to encourage, teach, rebuke, admonish, strengthen, and lead our often wretched and blinded inner lives to the in-most life of Jesus Christ through the faithful reading and accurate studying of God's Word, musical worship, community prayer, personal accountability, challenging discipleship, and Christ-centered fellowship.
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