Intro to Chapter 8: The Hierarchy of the Law.
Some Christians seem to believe that all of God’s laws have equal weight. Any situation that puts two of the laws into conflict then presents an ethical dilemma that cannot be resolved. In Jesus’ day, there were 613 laws that, according to the scribes, had to be obeyed. We can deride these many rules as man-made law, but even the ten commandments, written by God’s own finger, were subordinate to principles that were more fundamental still.
When the scribe asked Jesus which was the greatest commandment, Jesus did not name any of the ten. Quoting a passage in Deuteronomy, he said the greatest commandment was to love God. The second greatest was to love people — as Leviticus put it, to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Even between these two obligations, there is a definite priority. So much greater is the obligation to love God, that, in comparison, one must “hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life” (Luke 16:26).