Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today’s gospel lesson takes us to Tuesday of Holy Week. Jesus had just silenced a group of Sadducees who tried to trip Him up. When the Pharisees heard this, they move in try the same. One of them, a lawyer, a man knowledgeable about the Law of Moses, tests Jesus. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Of the hundreds of commands that the Lord gave Israel in the books of Moses, which one is the great one, the chief one, the most important one? Jesus answers, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Love for God and love for neighbor, these are chief commandments. Everything God commanded at Sinai, every law, statute, and ordinance given through Moses, instructed Israel on how they were to love God and how they were to love their neighbor. This is what the prophets preached as well. Through them God threatened to punish Israel because they hadn’t loved God with all their heart, soul, and mind, nor had they loved their neighbor as they loved themselves. The prophets threated punishment and held out the promise of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and new life for those who truly repented so that they could order their lives according to God’s commandments. God commanded Israel to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things and He commanded Israel to love their neighbors as themselves.
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day heard God’s commandments and thought they did them pretty well. They assumed they were loving God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and their neighbors as themselves. They could say, “Of course, I love God with everything that’s in me. God commanded us to bind His word on our hands and have them as frontlets between our eyes (Deut 6:8), and I do that. I wear God’s word on my hand and head as He commanded. God commanded us to put tassels on the hem of our garments and look at the size of my tassels! God commanded us to pray to Him, and everyone can see that I pray for long periods of time. God commanded us to tithe our animals, so I go above and beyond. I tithe from the mint and anise and cumin in my kitchen (Matt 23:23). They thought that setting their hearts, souls, and minds on the law and how to fulfill each command in an over-the-top way, was how they loved the Lord their God with all the heart, soul, and mind. In reality, their laser-like focus on the outward ceremonies of the law was really a love for their own righteousness Their hearts, souls, and minds weren’t directed toward God. They were directed towards showing others—and themselves—how righteous they could be. When it came to love for their neighbor, they couldn’t hide their self-righteousness to the same extent, but had to ask Jesus on another occasion, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), because they understood that they didn’t love everybody they encountered as they loved themselves. Yet they remained confident in their own righteousness and excelled at all God had commanded in His law.
But the law—which is summarized in the command “love”—is first and foremost a matter of the heart. The Pharisees worked strenuously on the outside but neglected the inside. They mistook the outward performance of the law for true love of God. What does it mean to love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind? It means to cling to Him alone in good days and in bad, in health and illness, in happiness and suffering. It means to expect only good things from God, and trust that everything we receive from Him is truly good, even if it seems evil and troublesome. It means to take refuge in Him alone in every adversity, so that if we know we have a good and gracious God, then we have all we need in this life. To love God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind is to set God before one’s eyes in this faith and to set His will before our eyes so that we walk in His ways. The second commandment is like it. What does it mean to love your neighbor as you love yourself? It means wanting good for them in this life and helping them toward those good things as you’re able. It means being patient and kind, being humble and gentle with others. It means being merciful, not just in action, but from the heart. The Pharisees only saw the law as a tool for sharpening their self-righteousness. They could not let the law do what the law was intended to do: show them their inability to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and their neighbor as themselves.
But for as much thought and focus as the Pharisees had given the law, Jesus asks them a question that shows them how little attention they’ve given to the gospel. He asks them what they think about the Christ—Greek for ‘Messiah.’ “Whose Son is He?” He asks. They answer partially correct. He’s the son of David. But Jeus wants to get them to a better understanding. “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?” David said in the Spirit, that is, by divine inspiration, that the LORD—God—said to his Lord, the Messiah, that he will sit at God’s right hand till He makes His enemies His footstool. How can the Christ be David’s son and David’s Lord, the one to whom David the king would bow? David’s son would have to also be God’s Son, which is what David confesses in the Spirit. It’s also precisely what Jesus had told the Pharisees about who He was. The crowds on Palm Sunday had confessed Jesus to be the Son of David, the Messiah. Jesus accepted their praises. Jesus had told the Pharisees Himself that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God (John 5:18). Not only does David prophesy in the Spirit that his Son would also be his Lord—God’s Son—but that his Lord would reign over His enemies, putting them under His feet. All who rejected Him, all who refused His teaching, would be put under His feet. The Pharisees seem to catch Jesus’ drift, so they make no reply.
The Pharisees could not accept Jesus’ teaching because that would mean they were wrong about the law. They would have to confess that they did not love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, or their neighbors as themselves. They would have to admit that they were not—in God’s eyes—good, holy, and righteous, but that they, like the Tax Collectors and notorious sinners, fell short of God’s law. They would have to confess that Jesus is David’s son and David’s Lord, God Himself in human flesh, and repent of their sin and unworthiness. This they refused to do. They preferred the illusion of their own righteousness and blamelessness to Christ’s righteousness and blamelessness which He freely offered to all who repent of their sins and look to Him for mercy. David’s son and David’s Lord had come to earn full forgiveness for their sins and give out that forgiveness to all who confessed their sin—that they do not love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and mind, or their neighbor as themselves. The Pharisees wanted to be righteous by their outward acts. Jesus wants to declare sinners righteous, covering them with His innocence, righteousness, and blessedness, which not only forgives sins but gives a new heart and the Holy Spirit. When the heart apprehends Christ as its only Savior and Mediator with God, it finds rests. The heart begins to truly love God. The heart covered with Christ’s righteousness and made new by the Holy Spirit also begins to observe the law—not only outwardly worshiping, praying, and hearing God’s word, not only the outward actions of love for one’s neighbor. The heart made new by faith in Christ sees that its doing of the law isn’t perfect. Our love for God and neighbor will not be perfect in this life because we still have the sinful flesh. But the heart made new by faith in Christ knows that it pleases God because it believes in Christ as Savior.
Look how St. Paul describes those who are justified by faith in today’s epistle: “I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The testimony of Christ—that He is David’s son and David’s Lord, true man and true God—is confirmed in believers as God daily and richly forgives our sins and raises us up to new life in His Holy Spirit, new life in which we grow in love for God and neighbor each day. We eagerly await the revelation of our Lord Jesus—His return in glory to judge the living and the dead—because on that day He will confirm us as blameless by raising us from the dead in glorified bodies, without the taint of sin, so that what we have now by faith—Christ’s innocence, righteousness, and blessedness—will be ours to see and experience for eternity. Amen.
May the peace of God that passes understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
