Love God, Love Your Neighbor

St. Matthew 22:34-46

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

St. Matthew 22:37, 39  [Jesus said] “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…[and] you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord…  Here we are dealing with the Pharisees…again!  The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were the really religious people; they were the religious know-it-alls.  They were the accepted interpreters of the Bible and the Law of God as well as all of the traditions that went along with all that.  The Pharisees were the absolute self-proclaimed experts in knowing how to live and what to say and what to do and what to think every minute of their lives, and they spared no effort to make sure to tell everyone else how to live their lives as well.  To the people around them, they appeared as super-holy, always doing the right thing, having righteousness and religion down to a science.

And that is exactly why they didn’t know anything about God.  They knew nothing of God’s heart or His attitude toward sinners or anything else about God’s will and promises and faith and hope and trust in His Word.  For all of their “knowledge,” they didn’t know the most important things about the Christian faith.  To them it was all doing and acting and appearing.  And it was all, at best, a misguided caricature of what true faith really was.

Beware, dear friends, of those holy people who give the impression that they have God all figured out.  Beware of those who spend so much time and effort looking like a Christian on the surface but underneath have no real substance to their confession of faith.  Beware of those who seem to live their lives convinced that somehow they have earned God’s love and favor by all of their godliness and outward piety but have no real regard for God’s Word.  Avoid those who love to ask questions just to test Jesus and see if they can get answers that back up their own misguided opinions.

Learn, then, from Jesus’ words.  Learn religion and holiness from Jesus’ lips, not from what you think or what you want to believe.  Learn to love the Lord and love your neighbor in and through Christ.  Seek your salvation in Him, and seek your service to Him in your neighbor.

The Pharisees asked Jesus a question: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”  But notice how Jesus answered.  They wanted one commandment, but He gave them two!  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength.  And love your neighbor as yourself.”  They didn’t ask for two commandments!  They asked which is the greatest!  But Jesus teaches them to love God and to love neighbor.  And by telling them both He is teaching them that there is no way to love God apart from loving the neighbor.

Note that well.  The Pharisees did the “church thing” very well; they had all the outward appearance of holiness and they put on a really good show.  But what they sorely lacked was love and care for others.

And this brings us to ourselves…  If we come here to church, and we sing and pray and say all the words, and people can drive by on Sunday morning and see our car in the parking lot, but then we go back into the week with only ourselves on our minds, repent!    Further, if we think that doing our Sunday morning duty today makes us more special or greater in God’s sight while we neglect to care for and support and uplift the people God puts in our life, repent!

If we are proud of being a Christian and a Lutheran, and we are glad we are churchgoers and regular prayers and hymn-singers, but then we walk out the door and go right backto our grudges against others and our playing favorites and our ignoring others, then, dear fellow redeemed, weep at your sinfulness and repent!

Our Lord teaches us that there is no loving God apart from loving our neighbor.  If we simply do not care about the people around us, then we ought not even dare to think that we can somehow still love God.  Jesus tells this to the Pharisees and to us in order to condemn our sinfulness, to crush our sinful self-centeredness, and to turn us to Him.

Now don’t think for a moment that your lack of love for your neighbor can be cured by pulling yourself up by your boot straps or by making some self-help resolution to change your ways.  The only answer to this sin – the only answer to ALL sins – is Jesus, the Son and Lord of David.  Christ teaches the Pharisees and us that love of God and love of neighbor go hand in hand, and that all of the Commandments and the Law are wrapped up in and hang upon Jesus.  That’s what the second part of the Gospel reading is all about.  Jesus is teaching the Pharisees here about His divine and human natures; the fact that He is both fully God and fully man.
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Here’s the deal…  The Christ is the Son of David.  That means He is a man born in the family tree of King David.  And yet David calls Him Lord.  That’s because He is before David; Jesus is eternal and has been with the Father from eternity.

So, what Jesus teaches and what the Pharisees can’t wrap their heads around is that Jesus is the Christ, and the Christ is both true God and true man.  He is David’s Son because He takes on flesh and is born into David’s line.  But He is David’s Lord because He is the eternally begotten Son who is true God.

And here is the miracle of the Incarnation: the divine nature of the Son of God takes upon Himself a human nature, together as one Person:  Christ.

But more than that, Jesus is God AND man; and that means He is the focus and substance of the Law!  Love God, love your neighbor.  Jesus is both fully God and Man at the same time.  He is both Lord and neighbor at the same time.  All of the Law and the prophets hang upon that because God and Man in Jesus hang upon the tree of the cross.

Dear fellow redeemed, all of the times you may have failed to love God and love your neighbor, all of that has been hung upon Christ.  Whenever you may have falsely served God and abandoned your neighbor, that is hung upon Christ.  Jesus, who perfectly fears and loves His Father and also selflessly serves His neighbor, takes into Himself not only the doing of the Law but its full punishment as well.

Jesus kept the commandments for us, and He is killed by our breaking of them.  Jesus fulfills the Law, and we are rescued from its curse; and it is all bound up and held together in Jesus who rose from the dead on the third day in order to send us His Spirit and to bring us to faith in His perfect work of salvation.

Now, in Christ, we have everything sorted out for us.  Now we are given the ability to love and glorify God by receiving what He has to give us: the forgiveness of sins.  And we have that already through the vehicle of the Divine Service.  We have received Christ’s Absolution – that forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven.

We have heard How Christ has paid for all sins with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death on the cross.  We remembered our Baptism and the salvation it gave us in the words of the Invocation – that trinitarian Name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And we are about to be invited to this altar where Christ gives us His own true and real body and blood under the forms of bread and wine to forgive us and strengthen us.  Water, Word, bread, and wine – these are all we ever need to live the God-pleasing life to which we all have been called.  Remember, we love God NOT by trying to impress Him with what we have done; rather, we love Him by receiving from Him in all the ways He wants us to have Him for forgiveness, life, and salvation.  And having been forgiven and strengthened by Christ, we then get to serve our neighbor.

Hear and learn His holy word.  Live daily in the washing given to you in your Baptism.  Confess your sins and be absolved for Jesus’ sake.  Be filled with the body and blood of Jesus by which He lives in you to do good works for others.  Receive what the Lord has for you here in His church, not for your own sake, but that in receiving the gifts of God, you are made into a gift for your neighbor.

So there it is: Love God, and love your neighbor.  This is true religion: to care for others and to help and support those whom the Lord has given you in your life.  Your Baptism, your Absolution, and Jesus’ body and blood are all given to you so that you might have in you the One who kept the Law for you.  By these gifts you are rescued from the condemnation of the Law become a person who knows the right way to glorify God and serve one’s neighbor.  Having Christ, now you learn that to love and serve your neighbor IS loving and serving the Lord.

Rejoice then, dear fellow redeemed, that Christ has fulfilled the Law and rescued you from its judgment.  Rejoice in your God-given faith which clings to Jesus for everything.  Trust in His gifts of water and word and body and blood by which Jesus is glorified in you.  Then, secure in your salvation in Christ, you get to go out and live in the world as those who serve God in the people He has placed in our lives.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.