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… In our Gospel reading for today, it is easy to tell what is most important to the Pharisees. They ask Jesus, “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” They asked Him that so that they could then decide whether Jesus really was a truly religious person.
And based on our Lord’s response, we can also tell what is most important to Jesus. He asked them, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?”That question was asked so that Jesus could see if these guys really knew how He can be both God and man and that they should believe and trust in Him.
It’s funny, really, because the Pharisees were supposed to be the religious leaders; they were the ones the people went to in order to find out about God. And yet, they knew nothing about real religion, they knew nothing about real truth, because they knew nothing about who Jesus was and that He really was fulfilling every single Old Testament prophecy about the coming Messiah. The were asking about how they could do the law and thereby be counted righteous and acceptable before God. They were asking the wrong question.
That’s always the way it is. Religious people always want to know all about the Law. They want to be “religious” about keeping it. They want to know how to live. They want to know what to do. They want to know how to act. They want to know how to figure out what God wants them to do so that they can check off all the little boxes on their little “To Do” list in order to avoid going to hell. Jesus, on the other hand, teaches them that He is the Savior. He is the One who accomplishes salvation. He is the one who has done everything needed to pay for all sins. He is the only One who has satisfied all of God’s demands. He is the one in and through whom God has loved us and continues to love us.
But, like we hear very often, we are really so much like the pharisees. We want to know, Is this a sin? Is that a sin? How far can I go or how much can I really get away with before I am guilty of committing a sin? And again, like the Pharisees, those are wrong questions. Jesus teaches you that it’s ALL sin. He tells you that apart from Him you are nothing but sin and death! Only the one who is David’s Lord and Son – that is, true God and true Man – Only He saves you from your sins and their eternal consequences.
All too many people want to be religious because they think that by figuring out some law and rules and commandments they can live their lives the right way. All too many people want a religion that spells out exactly how they should live. They want rules; they want guidelines; they want to know, like the lawyer and the rich young ruler, “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” (Lk 10:25; 18:18) which, by the way, is one of the most wrong questions ever to have been asked. All too many people want to know how to get and then stay on God’s good side.
OK, fine. For that you have the Ten Commandments. And Jesus boils those Ten Commandments down to just two: He gives you an 80% discount. Love God and love your neighbor. That’s it! Piece of cake!
So, how exactly is that working for you? You like to say that you love God, but there is usually a list of people you can’t stand. So, to say you love God while at the same time not liking some other people, well, that makes you a hypocrite. You cannot love God if you don’t love your neighbor. And that is finally why so many people can’t stand religion; it has too many rules that nobody can keep. Yes, religious people want rules, but at the same time those rules don’t really change anything. Rather, they just show people that if they have a standard to live by, they will fail miserably.
One of the worst things you can do is to misunderstand Jesus when He says, “Upon these two commandments – love God and love neighbor – all of the Law and the Prophets hang.” It is completely wrong to think that the Bible is about the Law and how we can live a good life.
Now don’t get me wrong, the Bible certainly gives us the Commandments. And the Commandments most certainly teach us how to live. But those commandments don’t give us the ability or the power to keep them. And when we break the commandments, all they do is condemn us. That is the main reason I don’t much care for the Ten Commandments being posted in yards and on billboards; they’re 100% pure unadulterated LAW; they don’ save anyone. Those commandments tell us nothing about Jesus. There is only one thing that the commandments do perfectly: they drive men to despair.
The commandments of God are pure, unadulterated Law. And as we learn from our Lutheran Confessions, the law does three things perfectly: it kills, it condemns, and it destroys. It is meant to drive sinners to their knees in recognition of their complete and utter hopelessness and helplessness before God. The Law confronts us with our sin, and it does this very well and very powerfully.
That is why it is vitally important to understand Jesus’ words the right way when He says that everything in the Law and the Prophets *hangs* on these two commandments. Simply speaking, when Jesus says, “the Law and the Prophets” He means the Holy Scriptures, especially the Old Testament. What are the Scriptures about? They are about Jesus. So, when Jesus says that the Law and the Prophets – which mean Him – all HANG on the commandments, He’s talking about His death on the cross. The Law itself says, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Dt 21:23), and St. Paul writes that Jesus is cursed with our sins when He hangs on the tree of the cross (Gal 3:13).
This is what the Pharisees did not understand. Jesus does NOT mean that the whole Bible is all about the Law and how you can save yourself and be a religious person. He means that HE HIMSELF will hang on the judgment and curse of the Law against sin when He hangs on the cross. The cross is death. Death is the curse of the Law. Jesus hangs on the curse when He hangs on Calvary. In other words, the Bible and true religion are NOT about the Law teaching you how to live. They are all about Jesus living for you and dying for you upon the very Law that you cannot keep.
That, dear friends in Christ, is why Jesus asks those same Pharisees whose Son the Christ is. In order to save you, Jesus can’t just be some random guy. He must be – and He IS – the only Son of God, the one who is true God, begotten of the Father and true man, born of the Virgin Mary. Only He can save you from your sins.
Since Jesus hung on the cross, since He hung upon the judgment and damnation of the Law, since He hung on the tree of death to give us life, we don’t dare hang our hopes on the Law. We don’t dare try to work out how we can take a shot at trying to please God by how we live. No, dear friends, we hang our hopes upon Jesus. We hang our faith and trust upon Him.
Jesus hung on the Law in your place. And in the water and word of Holy Baptism the Lord Himself hangs His name on you to mark you as His own, one who is redeemed by Christ the crucified. In the Absolution our Lord hangs upon you a great big sign that declares that you are forgiven and your guilt has been pardoned for Jesus’ sake. In the Sacrament of the Altar Christ Himself takes the same body that hung on the cross and the same blood that He poured out on the cross and gives them to you as the sure and certain promise of forgiveness, life, and salvation, upon which you can hang all your hope and faith.
Sure, the Law will sound good as long as you think you can keep it. But the moment you break God’s holy commandments, they will leave you twisting in the wind and doomed.
But not Jesus. He was nailed to the tree to hang on the Law for you. Jesus hangs on that Law, and you are redeemed.
Now, the great joy for your lives of having Jesus sort all this out for you is that you don’t need to think up tricky questions like Pharisees. No more trying to figure out which commandment is more important than the other. No more trying to figure out how much good you have to do to balance out the bad things you’ve done. No more trying to figure out how you are going to live like religious people while trying really hard to avoid living like religious people! No more trying to get on God’s good side by how you behave. And no more being nice to others just so God will notice and you can feel good about yourselves. No more fooling yourselves into thinking you have earned something from the Lord.
No, dear friends, instead of all that Pharisaic way of doing things, you have the Jesus way of doing things. He gave His life into death for you. That means that you don’t have to worry about pleasing God. Now you know that, because of Jesus, you are the Father’s beloved children; you are what Christ is. Now you can take all of your heart and soul and strength and mind and love God in this way – by loving those around you. You love God by living faithfully in your callings as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and whatever else it is that you do when you get up and move around each day.
Do that, not because it makes you square with God. Do it because you have already been put right with the Lord in Jesus.
It’s easy, dear friends, to want religion for the rules and wonder what to do when the rules turn around and bite you. Let the Pharisees, let the religious people of the world spend their time trying to figure God out and ask questions. Let them try to show how religious they are.
You, dear Christian, you, dear baptized saints of God, you, little children in Christ – you cling to the One who is both David’s Son and David’s Lord. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, has come in the flesh to hang upon the Law for you. Jesus hangs on the cross, fulfilling the Commandments, taking your place, taking away your sins, and winning eternal life for you.
Upon Him everything hangs. Upon Him everything depends. Your salvation is hung up on Jesus, and that means it’s a done deal in Him.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
