Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

The Bible contains two great teachings – the Law and the Gospel. If we want to understand the Scriptures we must learn to understand these two teachings without confusing them. The Law is easy enough to understand. It tells us what we are to do and what we are not to do. What does God want from you? That’s simple enough. Keep the Ten Commandments. Do obey your parents. Do come to church and hear God’s word gladly. Do love and honor your spouse. Do not covet or steal your neighbor’s possessions. Do not tell lies about your neighbor and defame his reputation. Certainly do not kill your neighbor. The Gospel, on the other hand, does not tell us what to do or not to do. The Gospel tells us what to believe. Believe in Christ and his work upon the cross and everything is already done. In our text today, the Pharisees come to Jesus and they want to talk about the Law. Jesus answers them, but then he changes the subject. Jesus wants to tell them about the Gospel. We begin in verse 34:

When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (Mt 22:34-36). In order to understand this account, we need to know a little bit of history. There were two factions within the Jewish community at the time. The Pharisees, who had the support of the common people, had combined the teachings of the Old Testament with the writings of the Jewish Rabbis. In doing this they had come up with not just ten commandments, but 613 religious rules: 248 laws about what to do, and 365 laws about what not to do. And amazingly, they actually thought that it was possible to keep all of these rules. The Sadducees didn’t believe in all these extra rules, but that wasn’t all. They also didn’t believe in the Resurrection of the dead. They were sure that the Resurrection was just another made up teaching of the Pharisees.

The Sadducees came to Jesus with a ridiculous scenario to try to prove that the Resurrection was impossible: A woman kept getting married and her husbands kept dying. By the time she died, she had been married seven times. Which of the seven men would be her husband in heaven? The Sadducees thought that they had Jesus backed into a corner. Instead, Jesus so utterly refuted them with his answer that the Sadducees never dared to ask him another question. The Pharisees were pleased that Jesus had refuted the Sadducees, but they too wanted to trap Jesus with his words. So they all gathered together and chose one of their very best scholars, a expert in religious law, to ask Jesus this question, “Which of our 613 rules is the greatest?”

They thought that they had trapped Jesus. Many rabbis had tried to answer this question, but all of them had been proved wrong. But the Pharisees had underestimated Jesus. They called him, “rabbi, teacher,” and he was, but he was far more. Jesus didn’t just know the Word of God better than anyone else, he had written it. In fact, he is himself the Word of God. So how did Jesus answer? He ignored all their man-made rules and said, “The greatest commandment is this: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 22:37:39).

The Law and the Prophets is another way of saying “The Old Testament.” Everything from Genesis, written by Moses, the Lawgiver, to Malachi, the last prophet, can be summed up in this: Love God and love your neighbor. Jesus’ answer is, in fact, the cliff notes version of the Ten Commandments. If you love God, you won’t worship other gods or use the name of the Lord in vain. You will gladly come to church and hear his word. And if you love your neighbor, you won’t kill him, steal his wife or possessions, or slander his reputation. If you love God and love your neighbor perfectly you have kept the whole Law of God!

God’s law is simple. It isn’t difficult to understand. The difficult part about God’s law is keeping it, because the Ten Commandments are not so much about outward behavior as they are about our your heart. God requires that your heart be filled with perfect love for him and for your neighbor. So even though God’s law is meant to show us what God wants from us, it ends up showing us how utterly we have failed. The Law of God, which demands perfect love, cannot help us on our way to salvation. Instead, it shows us our sin and accuses us. You have not loved God perfectly with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. You have not loved your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself. You are a sinner. You deserve to die.

Jesus knew that the Pharisees had not kept the Law – even though they thought they had. He knew that, just like us, they were incapable of mustering up perfect love for their neighbors, let alone for God. He knew that every member of the human race deserved nothing but death and hell. He even knew that the Pharisees were planning at that very moment to kill him. Today was Tuesday. They would kill him on Friday. And yet, Jesus loved his enemies with the perfect love that is impossible for us.

The Pharisees wanted to talk about the Law. They put all their trust and hope in the Law. They would have done well to hear the words of St. Paul, “All who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them’” (Gal 3:10). Those who depend on the Law for salvation are cursed and condemned by the same law in which they believe. And because Jesus loved the Pharisees, he changed the subject. The Law could not save them, but the Gospel could. The Law required perfect love, but only the Messiah could give it.

Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” Any Jewish schoolboy could have answered this question. Of course, the Messiah was to be a descendent of King David. Then Jesus asked, “If the Messiah is David’s son, then how did David also call him Lord?” No one was above King David except God. Therefore, if the son of David was also David’s Lord, it meant that David’s son, the Messiah, must be God. The Pharisees believed that the Messiah would come, but they did not believe that he would be God incarnate. Now the Pharisees realized that Jesus had trapped them. They had never understood their own Scriptures, and they couldn’t answer his question. If they were to speak further, they would have to acknowledge that Jesus was the Messiah, God incarnate, but they couldn’t do that! They could not refute Jesus. They could not answer him. And so they conspired to kill him.

What about you? Can you answer this question? How can a man be David’s son and David’s Lord at the same time?” How can a man be both man and God at the same time? I don’t know, and I don’t think you do either. But we believe that it is true. We confess, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who was redeemed me a lost and condemned person.” God became a man to do what we could not do. David’s Lord became David’s son and only he has perfect love for God. Only Jesus has perfect love for his neighbor. The perfect love of David’s Lord was offered up to God on behalf of all humanity, and in Christ, the just demands of the God’s holy and righteous Law were met and satisfied. This is how the seed of the woman crushed the head of the serpent. This is how God the Father placed all our enemies, sin, death, and hell, under the feet of his Son.

Do you want to learn to love God with all your heart? Do you want to learn to love your neighbor as yourself? Then listen to Jesus as he answers the Law with the Gospel. The Law demands perfect love and you don’t have it. The Gospel tells you what the Son of David has done on your behalf. The Law demands and it is never done. The Gospel gives and everything has already been done in Christ. He has conquered our enemies. He has conquered your selfish and sinful nature, he has conquered hell, and he has conquered death itself. We were powerless against these our great enemies, but David’s Lord became David’s son in order to do battle against our enemies. In perfect love he joined himself to us, our enemies became his enemies, our sin became his sin, and his perfect righteousness and perfect love became our. And having conquered every last enemy at the cross, our Lord was raised to life and now sits at the right hand of God the Father. Those who hang their hope on the Law will be condemned and die by the Law. But those who put their trust in Christ, even though they die, will be raised to eternal life. Amen.