Don’t be content to know the Law

Sermon for Trinity 18

1 Corinthians 1:4-9  +  Matthew 22:34-46

What do you tell someone who asks you, “What is your religion all about? What is Christianity?” Some would say, “It’s about following Christ.” But what does that mean? Many, would explain, it’s about being like Jesus, being good, doing good, not harming anyone. It’s about keeping God’s commandments. It’s about charity. It’s about self-sacrifice. It’s about love (however “love” is defined). To many people, that’s what Christianity is.

But that’s like taking a picture and tearing it in half, and then pretending that you have the whole picture when, in reality, you only have half of it, and not even the most important half of it. Imagine taking your service folder today, with that picture on the front, tearing it in half and believing that either half, by itself, represented Christianity. That would be madness. To understand a picture, you need the whole picture. To understand Christianity, you need both the Law and the Gospel.

The Pharisees described in the Gospels were content to know the Law. To them, that’s who God is. He’s the One who makes demands on us, who tells us what to do and what not to do, who loves the obedient and who despises the disobedient. They loved the Law. Loved talking about it. Loved studying it. Loved teaching it. Loved obeying it. And they loved the feeling of accomplishment they got when they did what the Law required. They also loved the feeling of superiority they got from comparing their obedience to that of other men. They loved believing that they were God’s favorites, favored far above those who didn’t love the Law as much as they did.

So it’s no surprise that their question to Jesus was a question about the Law. Now, Jesus had just finished clarifying a question about the Law for the Sadducees, who had been utterly unable to catch Jesus in their trap. Since the Sadducees were rivals of the Pharisees, to some degree, the Pharisees were eager to take advantage of the situation and prove that they could succeed where the Sadducees had failed. They could successfully trap Jesus with their question about the Law.

Now, why did they want to trap Jesus in the first place? Well, because Jesus had been teaching this “awful” message, this other message that He was calling “the Gospel,” that God loved lawbreakers just as must as He loved law keepers. That God was, in fact, eager to spend eternity with those who had broken His Law, while He was unwilling to allow good and decent people like the Pharisees to enter His kingdom. That made no sense, because, if God is understood according to the Law, then a just God must love the Law keepers and despise the Law breakers. Obviously this Jesus had to be stopped, had to be exposed as a heretic for teaching this other doctrine that wasn’t the Law.

So they put this question to Him: Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? What would He say? Would He dare say that the Law is evil, that the Law doesn’t matter anymore, that the Law is no longer valid, that His Gospel is intended to erase the Law? If He does, then we have Him! But, no, that’s not at all what He replied. He had an answer ready for them, from the Law. First, from the book of Deuteronomy: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And then He had added an answer from the book of Leviticus: And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole Law depends on these two commandments, as do the Prophets.

The Law is good. The Law is just. The Law is valid. And the Law is essential. Jesus agrees with the Law. In fact, you can’t know God rightly without the Law, without that part of the picture.

Now, this wasn’t the first time Jesus had given (or approved) this answer that summarizes the Law. Earlier in His ministry another expert in the Law asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus asked him what the Law requires, and the man replied with essentially the same answer Jesus gives in today’s Gospel, and Jesus told him then, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” But then the man wanted to justify himself, so he asked, “And who is my neighbor?” That gave Jesus the chance to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. And why did He tell that parable? He told it to illustrate that keeping the Law to love your neighbor as yourself requires the kind of love shown by the Samaritan to the beaten and dying man on the side of the road. And when He spoke those fateful words at the end, “Go and do likewise!”, it sounded like a thunderbolt in the man’s ears, because the kind of love that the Law requires is beyond what we, who are all born in sin, are able to supply. If you can’t love your neighbor as yourself, if you can’t always treat your neighbor with the love you would want your neighbor to show to you, then how can you possibly love God? You’re only commanded in the Law to love your neighbor as yourself. But you’re commanded to love God much more than that, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Jesus agreed that God is serious about His Law, which includes the Ten Commandments and all the other commandments, some of which were only for the Jews, some of which are for all people of all times, all summarized with this whole-self love for God, and with love for neighbor as a person loves himself.

Still, sadly, the Pharisees refused to accept that even they were Law breakers. They were content to know the Law, even as they lived under the delusion that they were actually keeping the Law. The fact is, no one keeps God’s Law, and so all are like that naked man on the left side of the picture on the service folder, who is being chased by death into the fires of hell.

For a moment, the Pharisees may have thought Jesus was on their side after all. But He wasn’t content to focus on the Law. He posed a question to the Pharisees that didn’t seem to be at all related to their discussion of the Law. 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, by 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?

Nowhere in the commands and threats of the Law is there any discussion of this “Christ.” The Law is very straightforward. Those who keep it will be rewarded with eternal life. Those who break it—ever, at all, even just a little—will die. There’s no talk there about the Christ. And yet every good Jew, including these Pharisees, knew that the Old Testament Scriptures talked quite a bit about the coming Christ. How did He fit into the doctrine of the Law? They hadn’t really thought about it, apparently.

But after Jesus talks about the Law, He wants to talk about the Christ, starting with who He is. The Son of David, of course, a descendant of King David, promised by God to King David to come from David’s lineage. And yet in Psalm 110, a Psalm written by David, David calls the Christ “my Lord.” Such a short, simple phrase. Someone might just pass right over it in reading the Psalm. The Pharisees can’t explain to Jesus how it can be or why it should be. And, tragically, probably the most tragic thing about Holy Week, they were content not to know. They left Jesus alone after that, and from that day on, no one dared to question Him further.

Don’t be content not to know this vital truth about the Christ. Don’t be content to know the Law. It’s only half the picture of who God is and of what the true religion is all about. Ask Jesus, ask the Scriptures about this teaching called the Gospel.

It’s the Gospel that teaches about the Christ. That, yes, He is the Son of David, born from a virgin mother of David’s lineage, as the prophet Nathan and the prophet Isaiah had said He would be. Born of the tribe of Judah, of the stock of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Born a Jew. Born a human.

But He would also be David’s Lord, the eternal Son of God who was with God in the beginning and who was God, who died and rose again and now sits at the right hand of God the Father and will come again at the end of the age to judge the living and the dead, when He will place all His enemies under His feet.

True God and true Man, the Christ came to be the Substitute for everyone, to fulfill the Law where every man had failed, to die for mankind’s sins against the Law, true Man that He might die for sin, true God that His death might be “for us,” might be sufficient to atone for the sins of the world. That already is Gospel, “good news,” that God loves the world, sent His Son for the world, and desires the salvation of every sinner on earth. But the Gospel is also more than that. It’s chiefly a promise and an invitation: Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. Or, He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. The Gospel is the preacher standing next to the naked man on the right side of the picture on the service folder, pointing him to Christ crucified and risen from the dead, promising Him that the Holy Spirit will sprinkle him through faith with the atoning blood of Christ and will wash him clean through Holy Baptism of his sins against the Law.

And there it is: the whole picture of who God is and what Christianity teaches. Not the Law only or the Gospel only, but the Law and the Gospel. The Law commands us what to do or not do and condemns us for disobeying. But the Gospel teaches us what Christ has done for us and shows us poor sinners what we are to believe in order to be saved. Know the Law, but don’t be content to know the Law. Know the Gospel, and believe the Gospel. For it, not the Law, is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. Amen.