18th Sunday after Trinity + Matthew 22:34-46 + September 30, 2018

In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Pharisees question Jesus to test Him in today’s gospel lesson. This is something we’re used to hearing. The lawyer’s question centers on the Law. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” He wants Jesus to take the entire Law, the five books of Moses with all its legislation and statues and commandments and distill it all down to the greatest commandment. We are familiar with Jesus’ answer. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the summary of the first table of the law, commandments one through three because the first three commandments teach man how he is to love God, how he is to use God’s name and hear God’s Word. “The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” With this Jesus summarizes the second table of the Law, commandments four through ten, by which the Lord teaches how we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. He says, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” This is the summary of the entire Law and the will of God for man. Love God with your whole being. Love your neighbor as yourself. There are two commandments but not two different loves because love for one’s neighbor flows forth one’s love for God. The one who truly loves God will love his neighbor. The Pharisees here, as elsewhere in the gospels, assume they do this.

Except they don't. St. Paul, a Pharisee, wrote in Romans 7:14, “We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.” A person can perhaps do the law outwardly, at times, but you can't fulfill the greatest commandment outwardly because it's about love and love is a matter of the heart. If the Law were carnal and fleshly it would be like any man-made law which requires certain outward behavior. Human law can compel you to do, or to refrain from doing, a lot of things. But it can’t make you love someone. But that’s what God’s Law does. It requires you to love God. Not just a little bit. Not just on Sundays. Not just when things are going well for you, but all the time, in abundance and adversity and everything in between. Heart. Soul. Mind. The Pharisees pretended the Law was carnal, worldly. That is was a list of what God demanded so that if you met His demands He would be pleased with you. But doing something to please someone, to impress them, or to earn their favor, isn’t love. You can’t love something when your mind is set on checking off items on the to-do list. When you love someone you don’t think, “What must I do?” You know what to do and you do it because love motivates you. This goes for God and neighbor. When you truly love God, you trust Him completely, you hold Him in reverence above all other things in life. You call on His name in prayer. You hear His Word as often as you can. When you love your neighbor you do whatever is necessary to help them as you’re able. The Law wants loving actions. But only if they flow from actual heartfelt love. Anything else falls short.  

By making the greatest commandment, and the second one which is like it that of love, Jesus shows us that the Commandments are not just things we do but our things that we do out of love for our neighbor and God because of the disposition of our hearts. This makes the law much more difficult than most people want it to be. It becomes impossible. Because we are like St. Paul. We are “carnal, sold under sin.” By nature we don’t love God or our neighbor from the heart. So, like the Pharisees, we turn the Law into a to-do list that doesn’t require actual love in the heart, then imagine that we’ve fulfilled the Law or at least done pretty well. Jesus, the Great Teacher, answers the question correctly, more correctly than the Pharisees wanted it answered, because if it’s about loving God and neighbor from the heart then we miss the mark, for “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

But the lawyer had called Jesus “teacher” so Jesus continues to teach. He tests the Pharisees who had tested Him. They are stuck in the Law, what God requires of them. Jesus wants to move them past the Law to something better. He asks them, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” and they answer correctly, “The Son of David.” So Jesus follows up, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying ‘The LORD said to my lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool?’ If David then calls him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?” They cannot answer. They focus so much upon the Law, what they are to be doing for God, that they have neglected what the Scripture teach about the Christ. In John 5:39 He says, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” They don’t find the Messiah in the scriptures because they think the scriptures are all about them and what God wants from them when in reality the Scriptures are chiefly about Jesus.

Jesus is the Son of David according to the flesh. David is Christ’s earthly ancestor as the evangelists show. But He is David’s Lord because He is the eternal Son of God. He is David's Lord, the Son of God, so that his death might atone for the sins of the world. He is son of David, a man, so that he might die, since it is impossible for God to die. So he assumes flesh and suffers and dies according to the flesh “to redeem those who were under the law” (Galatians 4:5) which they cannot fulfill. David’s Son and David’s Lord shows us the love which God has for His creatures, sinful and fallen though they be. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). No earthly king addresses his son and successor as “lord.” Yet David, by faith, looks to his descendant who will also be true God, who will atone for the sins of the world and offer the forgiveness He earns to all who repent of their sins and believe this promise.

Christ was teaching the Pharisees about himself, about the incarnation, and the love of God for sinners who cannot keep the Law. The Pharisees didn't want to listen, like many today who want to focus solely upon the Law and we do for God. Many, like the Pharisees, think that if they know what God wants from them then they have the Scriptures and Christianity figured out. Once they know what God wants from them in the Commandments then they set about to do those things, imagining that by them they please God. But all they’ve managed to do is make a to-do list which leaves heartfelt love out of the equation. Jesus teaches us otherwise, that we cannot love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind, until we know the love of God in Christ Jesus. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love Him because He first loved us.” Knowing the love of God in Christ, fully man and fully God, David’s son and David’s Lord, then we can begin to love God from the heart because we no longer have to check the list each day to please Him. We please Him simply by believing the Gospel, for “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrew 11:6). We can only love God when we contemplate the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. Through faith in Christ we begin in this life to love God from heart because of what God has done for us. Through faith we begin to truly love our neighbor as ourselves, not to please God, not to check items off the Law’s lists, but because of the great gift He has given us David’s son and David’s Lord.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.