Luke 10:27 teaches that the whole of God’s law can be summed up in two loves: wholehearted love for God, and love for your neighbor that treats them as you would treat yourself. Jesus did not invent this summary, but he placed it at the center of what it means to live in God’s kingdom and to inherit eternal life. The words are spoken by a lawyer, an expert in the Mosaic law, who answers Jesus’s question about what the law says and how he reads it.
He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
Luke 10:27 (WEB)
What Luke 10:27 Means
The verse begins with a command to love “the Lord your God,” which is the central claim of Israel’s faith: there is one God, and he deserves a love that holds nothing back. The four words “heart, soul, strength, and mind” cover the whole person, the emotions, the inner life, the physical energy, and the thinking. Taken together, they say that love for God is not a feeling confined to one part of life but an orientation of the entire self.
The second half widens the circle. Loving your neighbor “as yourself” assumes that you already take your own needs seriously, and it asks you to extend that same care to someone else. The verse does not define who counts as a neighbor; that question is taken up immediately after in the passage. What the verse does promise is that these two loves cannot be separated, and it does not promise an easy path to keep them, since the standard it sets is demanding.
The Context of Luke 10:27
Luke’s Gospel was written as an orderly account for a Gentile reader named Theophilus, and it places great weight on Jesus’s concern for outsiders, the poor, and those whom religious people overlooked. The lawyer’s question in verse 25 is a test, but his answer in verse 27 is accurate, and Jesus confirms it in verse 28 with the words “Do this, and you will live.” The exchange shows that knowing the law is not enough; the law is meant to be lived.
The verses that follow, Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan, show what loving a neighbor looks like in practice. Because the lawyer asks “Who is my neighbor?” to justify himself, the parable turns the question around and asks who acted as a neighbor. Read in this setting, Luke 10:27 is not a general moral slogan. It is the foundation for a story about mercy that crosses the boundaries people had drawn for themselves.
Key Phrases in Luke 10:27
Deuteronomy 6:5
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
(WEB)
This verse is the original command that Jesus’s lawyer quotes, and it stands at the heart of the Shema, Israel’s daily confession. Reading it beside Luke 10:27 shows that the call to wholehearted love of God was already ancient when Jesus repeated it.
Leviticus 19:18
“‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.
(WEB)
Here the command to love your neighbor as yourself appears in the law itself. Seeing it in Leviticus confirms that the second love in Luke 10:27 is not a new teaching but a restatement of God’s concern for justice and kindness among his people.
A Short Prayer From Luke 10:27
Lord, you are the one I am called to love with all of who I am. Gather my heart, my soul, my strength, and my mind, and turn them toward you each day. Teach me to see the people around me as you see them, and to care for them the way I would want to be cared for. Where I am selfish or impatient, correct me gently, and give me the grace to act with mercy. Let my love for you and my love for others grow together until they are one life lived for you. Amen.
