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Sermon for Trinity 18
1 Corinthians 1:4-9 + Matthew 22:34-46
Last week we talked a little bit about the unique position of the Third Commandment—the Sabbath Day commandment—among the Ten Commandments as the only commandment that spelled out a ceremony instead of a moral principle. Resting from work on Saturday was a ceremony that God commanded Israel to observe religiously. As we said last week, that ceremonial command was not a universal and permanent expression of God’s will for all people. It was only for the people of Israel, and it came to an end when Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses and then set it aside, making a New Testament in His blood. But behind that ceremony was the standing moral principle that remains: You shall love God above all things, which means you shall love everything that He commands, even the ceremonies, simply because He commanded it. With regard to the Third Commandment, Israel was to love God by keeping that ceremony that God had commanded them to keep, honoring His Word and command above their own desires to get some work done—and possibly make some extra money—on the Sabbath Day. The commanded ceremony has since passed away, but the moral principle, to love and honor God and His Word above all things, remains as a permanent expression of God’s will for all people. That’s why Luther summarized the New Testament meaning of the Third Commandment the way he did: We should fear and love God, that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.
In today’s Gospel, you heard Jesus summarize the first and greatest commandment in similar terms: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. That was and still is the greatest commandment, the chief obedience that God requires according to His holy Law: love for Him with your whole self. Even though this is the first and greatest commandment, it’s the one that most people skip right over, as if it didn’t exist. People like to think of themselves as “good people” if they don’t go out of their way to hurt or say mean things to their neighbor, or if they do some nice things for their fellow human beings, or if they advocate for some social cause they think is important. But all the while, this first and greatest commandment is hanging over them: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole self. Notice, it’s not any old god that people are commanded to love. It’s not a command to “be religious.” It’s a command to love, specifically, the LORD God, the God who revealed Himself in the Old Testament by the name Yahweh, or Jehovah, the God who made a special covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and with the whole people of Israel at the time of Moses. This is the God whom all people everywhere are commanded to love and to worship. This God, and no other.
But there is also that second-greatest commandment that Jesus cited: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love for God comes first. Love for your neighbor comes second. And, as Jesus says, the whole Law depends on those two commandments, as do the Prophets. In other words, the whole Old Testament Law is summarized in those two simple commandments. And here, it’s important to remember what that means. It means that none of the laws and commands and teachings of the Old Testament contradict the law of love for one’s neighbor, as if certain commandments were unloving on God’s part. No, they all support it! For example, God gave Israel certain laws commanding them to punish, or even execute, lawbreakers. The death penalty was common under the Old Testament Law. Does that sound “unloving,” executing people? On the contrary, as the saying goes, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” Love for one’s neighbor does not mean leaving the guilty unpunished. It means punishing the guilty, so that the guilty aren’t out there terrorizing or otherwise harming the rest of your neighbors.
In our context, you might apply that to the death penalty, which, if employed swiftly and justly, is still a good and godly means of punishing evil, protecting the innocent, and deterring more evil. Or you might apply it to illegal border crossings. Some people claim it’s the loving thing to do—even commanded by God—to let illegals stay in the country they crossed into illegally, and to leave them unpunished for their law-breaking, even reward it with benefits. But so-called love for the lawbreakers results in cruelty to the innocent. The innocent foreigners, who didn’t try to enter the country illegally, often suffer for trying to do things the right way, because of all those who did things the wrong way. Meanwhile, the innocent citizens of this country suffer higher prices, higher taxes, and reduced housing and public services because of the lawbreaking of the illegal aliens. And when they go unpunished, un-deported, it only makes it worse for the innocent. Failing to punish lawbreaking is not love.
Now, I bring this up merely as an example of the fact that “love” for one’s neighbor, as God defines it in Scripture, does not mean letting people do whatever they want, whatever they feel like. It doesn’t mean letting them “love who they love.” It doesn’t mean supporting wickedness or leaving wickedness unpunished. That’s not love. All the commands of the Old Testament, about how to worship God, or about how to treat one’s neighbor, or about how the guilty are to be punished, are all wrapped up in the commands to love God first, and to love your neighbor second.
At this point, we need to take a look at why Jesus is talking about the greatest commandments here. He didn’t just decide to preach a sermon on the commandments. He was approached with these questions about the greatest commandment, during Holy Week, by the Pharisees, who wanted to test Him, and trap Him, with these questions.
You see, for those who were fanatics for keeping and enforcing the Law, like the Pharisees, Jesus didn’t seem to be focused enough on the Law. He didn’t preach like the Pharisees did, always and only harping on people for their behavior, or bragging about how well they kept the Law. It seemed to the Pharisees that Jesus didn’t care enough about the Law, and so they prodded Him, to see if they could get Him to reject the Law of Moses. Because, if He did, they could bring Him up on charges right then and there. They wouldn’t have to follow through with their plot to arrest Him secretly later that week and hold kangaroo court against Him, in order to kill Him. If He publicly denied the Law of Moses, they had Him!
But He didn’t deny it. He correctly summarized the whole Law, and they actually agreed with Him on His summary. In another account, one of them says as much. Jesus didn’t deny the moral principles expressed in the Old Testament Law. He upheld them all.
But then He pressed the Pharisees with a question of His own. It was His turn to put them to the test. He asked them, What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is he?” They said to him, “The Son of David.” He said to them, “How, then, does David, in the Spirit, call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?”’ Now, if David calls him Lord, how is he David’s Son?
Let’s start with why Jesus asked them this question. The Pharisees thought they had everything they needed in the Law, in the commandments God had given to Israel through Moses. They were so focused on the Law that they missed the more important teaching of the Old Testament, the part that taught about the coming Christ. They thought of the Christ, the Son of David, as nothing more than another lawgiver and law enforcer, which is why they rejected the idea that Jesus could be the Christ, because He hadn’t been going around giving more laws or meting out divine punishment on the guilty. He had been preaching another message, called “the Gospel.” And the Gospel hinges on who the Christ truly is.
Whose Son is the Christ? They answered rightly that He is the Son (that is, the offspring) of David. God had promised to David that his son would sit on his throne, and build him a house, and reign over God’s kingdom forever. That promise was fulfilled in a lesser way by David’s literal son Solomon. But everyone in Israel understood that the true Son of David was not Solomon, but would be the coming Christ.
How, then, can David refer to his Son as his Lord? Jesus cites Psalm 110 to them, a Psalm of David, which he composed “in the Spirit,” that is, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And in it, David called his Son, the Christ, his “Lord.” The Pharisees were baffled. They had never considered that truth before, that David’s Son would also be David’s Lord. That the Christ, who would be true man, would be much more than a man. He would also be true God.
Now, why did God have to come in human flesh? Why did the Christ have to be both God and man? After all, God didn’t have to come as a man to give to the Law. He did that through a man named Moses. He didn’t have to come as a man to enforce the Law. He could do that directly from heaven by sending catastrophes or natural disasters or plagues. But the one thing God couldn’t do from heaven was to live under the Law in man’s place, and die under the Law in man’s place. To accomplish that, for the salvation of mankind, David’s Lord had to become David’s Son.
The Law is good. It is good and right to love the LORD God with your whole self, and to love your neighbor as yourself. The whole Law of God is good, including the punishments for disobedience to the Law—punishments which all people have earned for themselves, because all have sinned against the Law of God. All have earned the death penalty, including the eternal-death-in-hell penalty. Which is why the Christ came, to live under the Law in our place, to suffer and die in our place, and so to earn for all mankind a way to be saved from sin, death, and hell apart from the Law, through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
Most of the Pharisees continued to cling to their precious Law, without ever acknowledging that they themselves hadn’t kept the Law, without ever acknowledging that they needed the Christ to save them. As usual, the Holy Spirit calls out to you in this Gospel, “Don’t be like the Pharisees!” Acknowledge that the Law is good, yes, but also acknowledge that it cannot save you, that you need a Savior from your sins against God’s Law, and that Jesus is that Savior. He came both to earn for sinners, and to give to sinners, the free gift of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Receive His gift! Repent and believe in Him! Treasure and pay attention to God’s Law of love. But more than that, treasure and pay attention to the Son of David, the Son of God, whom the Father gave to the world, because He so loved the world, that all who believe in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. Amen.
