The greatest commandment is not the greatest teaching

Sermon for Trinity 18

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

In our Gospel today, which took place during Holy Week, while some of the very Pharisees Jesus was talking with were plotting to kill Him, they tested Him with that question about the greatest commandment in the law. It’s a good question, with a good answer. So we’ll consider this morning Jesus’ answer about the greatest commandment. But for as great as the commandment is, we’ll also see that the greatest commandment still isn’t the greatest teaching in the Bible.

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? What would the Teacher answer? Which of the Ten Commandments would He cite? Or would He branch out into the ceremonial laws—the commandment surrounding circumcision, or one of the sacrifices or temple rituals? Or, would He say that there is no great commandment, that the Law was no longer relevant?

Jesus’ answer shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It was at least the second time He had given a similar answer. Jesus said to him, “’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 the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” And remember, Jesus isn’t making up those two commands on the spot. He’s simply highlighting those two commands, already written in the Old Testament Scriptures, as the greatest.

What makes those two commandments the greatest? I’ll give you four different reasons.

First, because they start with the heart. You shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor. Jesus once said this about the heart: Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. The heart is the source of the sins that eventually are done by the hands, or by the tongue. On the other hand, the heart also has to be the source of any true obedience toward God. Doing the right things with the hands or saying the right things with the tongue still isn’t enough. The right things have to come from a right heart. And a right heart is a heart of love.

The second thing that makes those commandments the greatest is that they start with “the Lord your God.” The neighbor is important. He makes it into the second greatest commandment. But not the first. Loving (which includes honoring and trusting in and being devoted to) God has to come first. Loving “the Lord,” as in, Yahweh, not just any god or lord, but the One who revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush, the One who chose Abraham, Isaac, and Israel and made a Testament with the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai, the One who is revealed throughout the Old Testament Scriptures. Love for Him, with the whole heart, soul, and mind—that’s the first and greatest commandment. And it serves as a dividing line between all the peoples of the earth who don’t love that God, and those who do. If the first and greatest commandment is love for that God, for the true God, as He’s revealed in the Bible, then any and all idolatry, any and all worship of any other god is by definition a sin against the greatest commandment. All atheism and agnosticism breaks this first and greatest commandment. All belief in a generic god breaks this first and greatest commandment. Meanwhile, to love this God, to be devoted to Him with the whole heart, is to keep the first and greatest commandment.

Third, these commandments are the greatest commandments because they deal, not with temporary commands, given only for a time to the people of Israel, like circumcision and all the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, but with the moral law—with God’s determination of right and wrong, with God’s will for all people of all time, from Adam and Eve to the last people who will live on the earth before the Last Day, and even beyond. Loving the Lord as your God, and then loving your neighbor as yourself have always been and always will be God’s commands to all men—commands which will even stretch into the life after this life.

Finally, these commandments are the great commandments because, as Jesus says, The whole Law depends on these two commandments, as do the Prophets. It’s crucial that we understand this.

Love doesn’t nullify or override the rest of God’s commandments. Love doesn’t trump any of God’s commandments. Love is the basis for every commandment in the Old Testament, for every teaching in the Old Testament, for everything God did and for everything God required of the people of Israel. Love for Him with the whole heart, and loving your neighbor as you love yourself. That’s why every one of Luther’s explanations of the Ten Commandments begins, “We should fear and love God, that…,” because each commandment is simply an application of the greatest commandments.

So, for example, when God gave commandments forbidding extramarital sexual relations, or homosexuality, it’s absurd to come along now and say, “Yeah, but we’re supposed to love people, so those commandments don’t apply anymore! All that matters is love!” No, love was already there in those commandments. In fact, to engage in those sinful activities is the opposite of love, regardless of how people feel about each other. If a person truly loved God and their neighbor, they wouldn’t engage in those activities. Period. They wouldn’t commit those sins—or any sins at all! Everyone would worship the true God. Everyone would use His name rightly, to praise and thank Him and to ask for His help. Everyone would know and believe His Word and honor the ministry of it. Everyone would honor their parents and those in authority over them. No one would murder anyone or harm anyone. Everyone would love and cherish his spouse. No one would steal. No one would badmouth anyone or lie about anyone. And no one would covet the riches or the possessions (or the spouses) of other people. People in society would respect each other, there would be no war, no violence, no perversion, no threat. There would only be love for the Lord our God, and love for our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Yes, those are the two greatest commandments. But, you see the problem, don’t you? That’s not the world we live in. It’s never been the world we live in, not anywhere, ever. It never described the conditions in Israel. It certainly didn’t describe the socialist or communist “paradises” that have been tried. It has never even described the conditions in the Christian Church.

Why? Because it doesn’t address the real problem of humanity. Our problem is not that we don’t have the right laws, or that we don’t know the great commandments. Our problem is that, even knowing the greatest commandments, we are unable and/or unwilling to keep them as they were meant to be kept. The greatest commandments tell us exactly what to do, but they have no power to produce the love they demand, and they have no power at all to save.

That’s why the Lord wasn’t content to give Israel great and awesome commandments. He also gave promises of help and salvation to those who broke His commandments. King David certainly didn’t keep the great commandments, not always. For all the good he is known for, he is still well-known for some of his massive failures to love the Lord his God and to love his neighbor as himself, even resorting to adultery, murder, and lies. So God made a promise to David, a promise that’s repeated in various forms throughout the Old Testament. He would send an offspring of David, a Seed, a distant Son. That’s what Jesus brings up in the second part of today’s Gospel.

“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?” They couldn’t answer. They had never thought it through. They were so focused on the Law that they overlooked the promises. They overlooked the Gospel.

The Gospel is that God promised from the beginning of the world to send a Savior for the human race, because since the fall into sin we haven’t been the loving creatures God made us to be. That Savior would be a man, an offspring of Adam and Eve, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of King David. But He would be more than a man. David calls Him his “Lord” in the Psalm Jesus quoted, Psalm 110. The Savior would be true God, the Son of God. He would keep the greatest commandments in our place, and then die in our place, to earn for us the forgiveness of sins—forgiveness for all our failure to love the Lord our God and our neighbor as ourselves. The Gospel is the promise that all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of David who is also David’s Lord, will be forgiven, will be saved from sin, death, and the devil, will be made children of God and heirs of eternal life—all through faith in Christ Jesus. This is the greatest teaching in the Bible. It’s the purpose of everything, of the entire history of the world. It was all pointing to the One who would come to save us from our failure to keep the greatest commandments.

The Pharisees rejected this greatest teaching. They rejected Jesus as the Christ and, later that week, helped to put Him up on a cross. But in doing that, they unwittingly became part of God’s plan to bring salvation to mankind. Because Jesus rose from the dead, after suffering for the sins of the world. And, as the Psalm says, the Lord, God the Father, sat Jesus down at His right hand and made Him ruler over all things as He puts all His enemies under His feet.

For breaking God’s greatest commandments, you and I deserve to remain His enemies. We deserve to be put under the feet of King Jesus. But instead, He calls out to each and every penitent sinner, “Don’t be afraid! Trust in Me! I died for you! And instead of putting you under My feet as My enemies, I’ll raise you up to sit with Me on My throne!”

Trust in the Lord Jesus! Receive God’s forgiveness for your sins! And then, spend the rest of your life learning to walk according to God’s greatest commandments, as imitators of the Lord Jesus, as those who rely, not on the greatest commandments to be saved, but on God’s greatest teaching, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of David—David’s Lord, and ours. Amen.