NOTES for Deu 6:5
The call to love God "with all your heart, with all your being ('soul'), and with all your strength" became a most important part of both the Yahwistic and later the Jewish tradition, where it became a prayer comparable in importance for Judaism to the "Our Father" for Christianity. What was so important in this call? After all, love for God is spoken of not only in this chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. But it is precisely here that we are told how love for God grows in a person and how relationship with Him is built.
Everything naturally begins with the heart, for in the language of the biblical books the heart designates the spiritual center of the human person, where choices are made and decisions are taken. And they are taken on the basis of the system of values and life priorities by which a person is guided after making one or another life choice. Naturally, when a person turns to God, not to some abstract "God in general," but to the God of the Bible, he chooses the Torah and the path of righteousness, the path of following the commandments given by God; and this, in turn, forms in such a person's heart a new system of values and priorities corresponding to the Torah. And then one can say that the person gives his heart to God.
But this is only the beginning. A new system of values and priorities changes a person's whole inner life, his "soul." In this case we are not speaking about the soul in the sense in which we understand the word today, but about a person's inner life as a whole, about his thoughts, feelings, emotions, about what today we collectively call a person's inner world. Naturally, it cannot fail to change in accordance with the new system of values and priorities by which the person, after turning to God, has begun to be guided.
But even this is not all: after a person's inner life, his outer life also changes, provided that conversion as a spiritual process reaches its logical completion. The corresponding Hebrew word designates not only a person's physical and mental powers, but also all his abilities and possibilities connected with outward manifestations, possibilities determined not only by his own inner potential but also by external circumstances. In fact, this is exactly what we usually call outer life, to some degree setting it in contrast to inner life.
It is no wonder that in a spiritually whole person the outer life will correspond to the inner life; it will be determined by the same system of values and priorities as the inner life. And only then can one say that the person belongs wholly to God, and that his love for God is shown not only in words but also in deed.