Hang the Law

Jesus identifies God’s Greatest Commandment: love God, love others. God is love, this has always been the greatest commandment, and is the “one thing” we are commanded to: the rest is commentary. When Law and Love for God and Others are out of alignment, you get Legalism or Sentimentalism, Humanism or Hypocrisy. When they are lined up, you get life as it was meant to be, life abundant, life in the footsteps of Christ. This is who we are, our Covenant together, to Love God and Love Others.

Walking Through a Door

I was running through this hallway full speed, one of my best friends, Jeremy Dickinson, chasing me full speed.

Pulling the door closed behind me, Jeremy running into it.

My Dad jumping into the door frame.

Walking through doors is harder than it looks.

Success means walking through the door. There’s a lot of ways that can go wrong.

We come to one of the most oft-twisted and misunderstood statements of Jesus. It is a powerful and central declaration of truth, and understood rightly, can rightly shape and direct your understanding of Scripture, your walking in holiness, in life more abundant.

The Greatest Commandment.

Recall that they had been out to trick and trap Jesus.

The Pharisees and Herodeans took their turn.

Then the Sadducees tried to trap Jesus, and he left them astonished.

Now the Pharisees is back up.

Matthew 22:34–35 ESV

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

I don’t know if he is trying to trap him or catch him out this time. The text doesn’t say.

In the Mark passage it says “seeing that he answered them well...” It may be that this Pharisee saw Jesus was dropping knowledge, dropping wisdom, and saw an opportunity to learn.

To ask the “big question:” what is the most important thing?

Matthew 22:36 ESV

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

The word is “megas”? Which is the “mega” commandment, the greatest, loudest, highest?

Matthew 22:37–38 ESV

37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment.

Luke’s telling adds “all your strength.” The Deuteronomy 6:5 passage it quotes has “heart, soul and might.”

We could do a cool word study on these three: heart, soul, mind. How the 1st Century audience would break those down is probably different from how we would separate, especially “heart” vs “mind”… but the point is Jesus collecting ALL the things.

It isn’t about artificially separating out our will, from our feelings, from our thoughts, from some part of us that might float separate from our body… Jesus’ whole point is that ALL of us, every part, every division, is to love God.

Is is the greatest or just the first? Mega and Proto, both, all of the above. First and greatest commandment.

Then Jesus goes beyond the original question. Bonus answer!:

Matthew 22:39 ESV

39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Love yourself. There’s a temptation toward some pop-psychology here like “you’ve got to love yourself, man!” But the language doesn’t setup a two step process, love yourself first, then others.

It assumes the first, it assumes you “love” yourself… and you do. Even the person who isn’t being wise in the way they love themself, they are still automatically, innately, even reflexively considering and prioritizing their own needs. It’s as instinctive as flinching.

If you’re hungry, you are looking for food. If you are in pain, you are seeking, trying to stop that pain, you are trying to satisfy your physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual needs…

Do that for one another. For your neighbor… which Jesus defines WAY more broadly than anyone in his audience was comfortable with. They wanted that to mean “Jews only, ideally just the ones literally next to me” and Jesus clearly expands that to e’ry’body. Even especially your “enemies”, those different from you, those across the aisle, on the “other side.”

He quotes from Lev 19:18 here. I think it’s notable that his quotes are both from Torah, but this same principle of love is written all throughout the rest of Hebrew Scripture. We saw a ton of that as we walked through the prophets,

And the scribes knew it, the Pharisees knew it.

From Hillel, a hugely influential Rabbi, a Pharisee, who likely died right around the time Jesus would have been Bar Mitzvah’d. His version of the Golden Rule:

‘That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.’. - Hillel

Jesus’ version is better, the Golden Rule

Matthew 7:12 ESV

12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

They both have that connection to all Torah, all the Law and the Prophets, that’s even more, and then here Jesus brings it home:

Matthew 22:40 ESV

40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

On them they “depend” or “hang.”

This word “hangs” is the same as the criminals beside Jesus “hanging” from their crosses. All their weight, and all their life, hanging from that cross, it all “depends” on it.

So if you miss this… it all comes falling down.

What would it look like to miss this?

What if…

Love for Neighbor without God (Humanism)

If my life looks like “Love” for my neighbor… but no connection to God’s Love or God’s Law… I have gone wrong with all.

Similarly “God is love, man...” and it’s really just about loving people, right? I mean, isn’t god in all of us, and so we are kind of all god, right? So just… love each other. Who defines what love is? What it looks like when it gets up in the morning, what love eats for breakfast, how love takes action in the street? Oh, God does.

Love for God without Neighbor (Hypocrisy)

If my life looks like I “Love” God, and aligns with the “Law”, but there is no sign of “Love” for my neighbor… I have gone wrong with all.

The “Christian” that looks great at church and goes home and beats their wife or kids, or takes advantage of their workers… or even just ignores the hungry and hurting. We are all works in progress, absolutely,

Law without Love (Legalism)

If life with God looks like Law… and there is no sign of Love… I have gone wrong with both.

The legalist, the by-the-book, holier than thou, at church doing the “right things”, hoping to earn their way in, secretly afraid of God as a distant moralist Judge. No intimacy, no relationship, usually no understanding of grace, but all about works righteousness.

Love without Law (Sentimentality)

If life with God looks like “Love”… and there is no sign of or alignment to His Law… I have gone wrong with both.

I associate this with the phrase “spiritual but not religious.” God is love, man… so I just kind of “love” the big man in the sky, the idol little-g god I have created, but there is no holiness, no righteousness, no fear of the Lord, no respect, no life transformation into life-as-it-should-be. No life abundant, just life-as-I-want-it + “god.”

Famously, there are the 10 commandments. Jewish tradition identifies 613 commandments to follow. The New Testament has 1050 commands, lots of duplicates in there.

That could be exhausting, overwhelming, how could one possibly juggle and manage to do all of that!

Of course, they can’t. You can’t. I can’t. And to earn salvation? No, we don’t even try, we rely wholly on the perfect life of Jesus, His Righteousness created and given to us. In Christ, we are perfectly righteous, in line with every command, every law, and only in Christ. We never earn it, by grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone.

AND (not but), those commands are given for our good, to teach us life and life abundant… so in our radical freedom in Christ we want to learn to live life as it was meant to be.

But the Master of Life boiled it all down to one thing?

Hang the Law

So every law, every command connects, depends, hangs on these. Even the 2nd hangs on the first.

We don’t understand any of the laws until we can trace the line to see how it hangs on these commandments.

Some are easy:

Leaving the corners of your field unharvested: love for the poor, an act of social justice, a kind of welfare.

There’s a rule about building a parapet, a fence, around the roof of your house. So people don’t fall off. It’s a building code, preventative care and safety for your neighbor.

Rules about disposing of waste outside the camp. Even the rules about people having to go outside the camp, lepers and other certain diseases. Hard rules… but intended to prevent disease and contagion. Rooted in love for neighbors.

My favorite: you shall not boil a kid (baby goat) in its mother’s milk. That is where the whole “kosher” thing of separating dairy from meat comes from, but it starts with that law. This isn’t about faceless milk or meat you buy at the grocery store… helped that mom birth that goat. And there is an unnatural cruelty in taking the mother's sustenance, intended to nurture that baby goat, to prepare her offspring for consumption. It cultivates human ethical boundaries, human compassion, love for one another.

Every law depends on this. And I don’t, frankly, understand them all yet. But I know this is their purpose. Because the Master of Life tells me so.

Just One Thing

This is not 4 things to get right, or 613, or 1050… This is ONE thing, one relationship, one commandment, one love… and a few ways to notice when you’re going astray.

Am I walking in righteousness? Am I living life as God has created it to be?

Never to gain salvation, never to build up my works, never to be enough…

But because I love God, because He first loved me, because I want to worship and honor him, I want to live a life that honors and delights Him… and His number one thing? Love Him. That’s a self-referential circle. And second, love others. Love God, love Others.

We are walking through the door.

Not the door to salvation, Christ did that, Christ alone, it is His righteousness that saves you. And He empowers you to love as He loves. To have the relationship with Father and Spirit that He has, and relationship with Him.

He invites us on the Way. Maybe that’s a whole hallway of doors, from love to love, from righteousness to righteousness.

Figuring out how to walk out love for God today. In your situation. In your circumstance.

Figuring out how to walk out love for your neighbor today. In your house, in your work. Yes… that guy.

Even when it’s hard

How do I do this when it is hard? When I can’t see God or what He is doing?

And you haven’t met my neighbor! You haven’t met my Samaritan! They are impossible to love, impossible to connect with, impossible not to hate.

“Love God, Love Others” feels awfully trite when life is falling apart.

From my lips, yes… and I don’t know your suffering.

But let’s remember who is talking… and when he is talking. As best I can gather, this is Jesus, and it is Tuesday.

Which means, for him, tomorrow he will have the last supper with his disciples, his friends. And one of them will betray him.

Tomorrow night he will be praying in the Garden so desperately that he sweats blood. Praying that God would find any other possible way than the path, the door, that lies before him.

Tomorrow night, likely in the wee hours of the morning, he will be arrested, dragged to court, condemned and as the new day rises, he is “hung” on the cross of crucifixion for six hours and dies around 3pm, I think on Thursday.

This is Tuesday… and Jesus knows what is coming. And from that place he says here is the greatest thing, the most important thing, the one thing on which it all “hangs”… Love God, Love Others.

Because He loves and trusts His Father, he walks willingly to his death.

Because He loves us, he lays down his life for the worst of sinners, for you and for me.

And because we walk in his footsteps, because we call him Lord and Savior, we walk in the Way he set before us, through the door He sets before us.

This is who we are, this is the core of our definition as a church, right here at the heart of our covenant.

Covenant

Let’s read it together:

As disciples of Jesus we covenant together to love God and love others, inside and outside the fellowship, by the Spirit of God, in sacrifice, submission and trust, we are on mission: to encourage and equip one another to take the next bold step in being and making disciples of Jesus.