Matthew 22:37 English Standard Version (ESV) And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

Mark 12:30 English Standard Version (ESV) And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

Luke 10:27 English Standard Version (ESV) And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

These are three different accounts of the same incident. The issue here is not truth. All are true. Variations in text vary for different reasons. John Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark. It was unlikely that he was in attendance at the time it was said. The same goes for Luke because at the time Luke was a physician. Matthew was likely to have been an eyewitness to those words as they were spoken.

So what does this matter in the scheme of things if we consider that all were inspired by God through the power of the Holy Spirit? It is because we all have the power of the Holy Spirit within us and we all hear differently. That is not a matter of truth nor is it a matter of memory. It has more to do with what we need to hear to believe.

When it comes to the Holy Spirit speaking truth to us in any circumstance it is more important to hear, to understand and to believe than it is in the mincing of words. Slight variations of text or the memory of text or the version of scriptures are not worth correcting when observed. We are human and with that comes a variety of personal preferences, style, and habits. Each one has some influence on communication. Some are so unimportant that everyone should ignore them.

1 Timothy 1:15-17 English Standard Version

¹⁵ The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. ¹⁶ But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. ¹⁷ To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Paul uses an expression of sinfulness which in the world was not true. There are many men that came before Saul (Paul’s former life) that were much worse than Paul. The expression of “I am the foremost” can be looked at several ways but the only one that counts is Paul’s view of his former life. The same has to be said of each of us.

If we choose to see the sins of others to be greater than our own we have not taken our sins seriously enough to desire forgiveness. We need to make it personal. “I did it. I chose wrong. I am guilty.” Nowhere in those confessions is there room for “I’m not so bad.”

The point of seeing ourselves in that light is that we need to see that Christ can save anyone no matter how “bad” they are in life. It isn’t about us, it is about the lost. “I was” is just as important as “I am”.

If we cannot express our past conditions in terms of serious personal sin the lost will assume that we were always “Mr. Goody Two Shoes”. “I was lost and now I am saved” while true is not convincing to a soul that feels they are beyond redemption. Paul was a strong witness of change. Many saw what he was before his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus. We did not see him and only have his word for it.

I knew the people who witnessed Christ to me.