... And the Second Like It

A couple of weeks ago, the subject of football came up in our house, as one of the ladies asked me when the Super Bowl was scheduled.

I mentioned that I thought it was Feb. 13, and Miss Lynn’s response was something I think I will always remember: They wouldn’t schedule the Super Bowl for Valentine’s Day weekend, would they?!

I suppose there’s nothing sacred anymore.

What you may have figured out from this story is that we’re not much into watching football at our house. It wasn’t always that way. In fact, I for several years I had the NFL Sunday Ticket package with DirecTV, and Annette and I would spend hours every Sunday, Monday and Thursday watching football.

At some point, I just decided that I wanted that time back, and so I decided to stop paying attention to it. The fact that I’d been a Miami Dolphins fan made the decision easier, I’m sure.

Anyway, I understand there’s a big game on tonight, and we’ll probably wind up watching the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet.

Now, I might not be able to name the quarterbacks in tonight’s game or give you the teams’ records this year or even make an educated guess about who might win, but I do know one thing that will happen: The game will start with a coin toss.

This should be a simple thing, perhaps the simplest thing that takes place on the football field from one week to the next. But you’d be amazed at how many times this simple coin flip has gone wrong.

As I was preparing this message, I did a little research, and I came across a 10-minute video on YouTube of NFL coin flip bloopers.

Some of you may remember the most notorious of those bloopers.

It was Thanksgiving Day, 1998. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Detroit Lions had played to a 16-16 tie at the end of regulation.

As per the NFL rules at the time, the captains of both teams joined a referee at midfield for the coin toss that would determine which team would receive the kickoff to start the sudden-death overtime.

As the visiting team, the Steelers got to call heads or tails. Team Captain Jerome Bettis called “tails,” and that’s how the coin landed. But the referee thought Bettis had said “heads” and allowed the Lions to get the first possession.

In those days, the rules stated that whoever scored any points first in overtime was the winner, and Detroit soon marched the ball downfield far enough to get into field goal position and won.

The whole thing caused quite an uproar, as you can imagine, and in fact, the NFL changed its rules about overtime because of it. And NFL referees are also much more careful now to ensure that they’ve understood the call BEFORE the coin is flipped.

But the blooper reel that I watched showed players and referees confusing which side of a coin was heads and which was tails. It showed the players forgetting the strategic advantage to getting first possession of the ball. In short, if you can imagine a way to mess up something as simple as a coin toss, it has probably happened.

And that’s pretty amazing, since there really are only two ways for a coin toss to go. After all, there are only two sides to a coin.

I tell you all of that to say this: When Jesus replied to the expert on the law who had asked Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law,” He was effectively telling this man that there is one commandment with two sides, just as a single coin has two sides.

You’ll recall that we looked at this interaction last week from chapter 22 in the Book of Matthew. Go ahead and turn there in your Bibles.

Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees had been trying to entrap Jesus. And so, this expert on the Jewish law had asked Him, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” We’ll pick up with Jesus’ answer in verse 37.

Matthew 22:37–40 NASB95

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.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Last week, we talked about the first part of Jesus’ answer, the great and foremost commandment, that “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

This week, I want to talk about the second part of Jesus’ response, what I want you to think of as the other side of the coin.

The first thing to notice here is that the lawyer had asked Jesus what was THE great commandment. And, like I said last week, when the Pharisees heard Him responding by quoting from the Shema, they couldn’t have helped but agree with Him.

These words in verse 37 were, after all, part of the prayer they recited twice a day every day. And they were kind of a restatement of the first of the 10 Commandments — You shall have no other gods before me.

But Jesus never made things easy for the Pharisees, and He never responded quite the way they would like for Him to have responded.

So I can imagine that when He said, “The second is like it,” some of them became frustrated with Him.

In fact, at the end of this exchange, in verse 46, Matthew writes that from that day on, none of the Pharisees dared to ask Jesus another question. They were tired of Him tripping them up with their own traps.

But as I studied this passage this week, I had a question that I’ve wondered about many times before, so I finally did a little digging.

The question is this: What did Jesus mean by “The second is like it”?

I took a look through some of my favorite commentaries, and the truth is that most folks just breeze past this part of the verse and move on to the part about “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

I did find one commentary that said it probably means this commandment is of equal importance as the one in verse 37.

And that’s probably true. In fact, you’ll hear me argue something along that lines later. But "the second is like it” seems an odd way of saying “the second is just as important.”

And that’s one of the red flags I look for to tell me that there might be something going on with the language that I’m missing.

So, I did a word study on this word, “like.” The Greek word here is homoios, and it means “like, similar, or resembling.” Well, that’s not very helpful, because that’s just how it’s translated.

So the next step in a word study is to look at how a word is used in other places by the same author.

And here’s where I struck gold.

It turns out that Matthew uses this word eight other times in his Gospel, and in each of those cases, he is quoting Jesus.

What’s more, each of those other eight times we see the word homoios, it appears in the telling of a parable.

Now, some of Jesus’ parables were extended stories. Think of the Parable of the Good Samaritan or the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But not all of them were. Some were simple metaphors or similes.

Get ready for an English lesson.

A metaphor is a figure of speech. It is a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar. In English, when we use the word “like” in a metaphor, it’s called a simile.

So, a coin with two sides might be a metaphor for the two great commandments. But if I said the two great commandments are LIKE a coin with two sides, that’d be a simile.

The point of a metaphor or simile is usually to take something that’s hard to understand and make it easier to understand by comparing it to something that’s more familiar to us.

And that’s just how Jesus uses this kind of figure of speech throughout the Gospel of Matthew.

In each of the other eight times we see this word homoios, Jesus is using it as part of a simile. Seven of those times, He uses homoios to describe the Kingdom of Heaven — something His listeners understood as a concept but that was still unclear to them as a reality.

He used something they understood well to explain something they didn’t understand well.

Let me give you two examples, from Matthew, chapter 13.

Matthew 13:44 NASB95

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

And then, in the very next verses, we see another short parable, another simile about the Kingdom of Heaven:

Matthew 13:45–46 NASB95

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

The idea in both of these little parables is that we should so value having a part in the Kingdom of Heaven that we would be willing to give up everything else on earth for it.

And the construction of every other simile Jesus uses in the Gospel of Matthew is the same.

Something hard to understand or to quantify is compared to something that’s easy for us to understand. THIS hard-to-put-into-words thing is LIKE that easy-to-understand thing.

So, how does this fit with today’s passage, where Jesus responds to the lawyer with the great and foremost commandment, followed by the second that is LIKE it?

Well, here’s the thing. Love in Scripture isn’t really about some feeling you have in your heart. It’s not simply an emotional thing. Or at least, it’s not ONLY an emotional thing.

Love is an action verb. In Scripture — and I’d argue that in life, too — love is characterized by DOING.

My wife loves me, so she makes tasty dinners for me. I love her, so I yank on her ponytail once in a while. Or I send her flowers. Or I write sweet notes to her. That kind of thing.

The idea is that love that’s never expressed in action is a pale representation of real love.

But what kinds of things can we really DO for a God who has no need of anything from us, a God who exists as spirit?

There’s nothing we can give God that He doesn’t already own. He’s not waiting around for a Hallmark card from us, even if we knew where to send it.

The Pharisees would have answered that keeping God’s commandments showed that they loved Him, and they wouldn’t have been entirely wrong about that.

The problem with that, though, is that sometimes, as in the case of the Pharisees, commandment-keeping turns out to be self-righteousness, and that’s not loving God.

I think what Jesus was getting at with this simile was that we have a hard time knowing HOW to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. We have a hard time knowing how to put action to the emotion.

And so, He gave us this little explanation by way of comparison. Loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind is LIKE loving your neighbor as yourself, much the same way that the Kingdom of Heaven is LIKE a pearl of great value that the merchant bought by selling everything he owned.

If you want to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven, then you’re gonna have to be willing to give up everything you value here on earth.

If you want to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, then you’re gonna have to love your neighbor as yourself.

When this lawyer asked Jesus to tell him which is the great commandment, Jesus responded with two commandments from the Old Testament, because the two cannot be separated. They are two sides of the same coin.

If we are made in the image of God — in other words, made to reflect His character — then we should love the things that He loves.

And what does the Bible say He loves? He loved the WORLD so much that He sent His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will have eternal life. Right?

Jesus loved people — even those who crucified Him — so much that He gave His very life so that those who repent from their sins and believe in Him might be saved.

And if we are being conformed to the image of Christ, then we should love people, too.

And remember that love is an action verb. It’s characterized by DOING.

In fact, Jesus raised the bar of love for those who follow Him in faith.

Turn to John, chapter 13.

Now, when we meet Jesus here in the upper room with His disciples on the night before His crucifixion, it is the day after his interaction with the lawyer.

In that interaction, He had been talking to Pharisees, and He had quoted from the Law, from the Old Testament. But on this night, He was talking to His followers, to those who had put their faith in Him as the promised Messiah and King.

And picking up in verse 34, we will see that He had a special commandment for them — and for all of us who follow Him in faith.

John 13:34–35 NASB95

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

“Love one another, even as I have loved you.” This wasn’t just “be nice to other people.” This wasn’t even “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This was “love one another, even as I have loved you.”

He had loved them with a choosing love. That’s the type of love He mentions here. The Greek word is agapao. You’ve heard it as agapé.

It’s different from eros, or romantic love. It’s different from phileo, or the brotherly love within families. This is love that loves with grace. It’s love that is given, whether deserved or not. This is love that loves simply because I choose to love.

Jesus loved His disciples with a serving love. Minutes before this statement in the upper room, He had washed their feet — even the feet of Judas, who would later betray Him. And He called on them to do likewise.

The point wasn’t that they should go around washing each other’s feet all the time. The point was that they should SERVE one another. They shouldn’t be waiting around to BE served, but rather they should be looking for chances to serve one another.

The point was that they should set aside their own desire to be considered important and instead consider others more important than themselves.

Jesus also loved His disciples sacrificially. He set aside His very right to live, not to mention His right to be crowned King.

He took upon Himself their sins and ours and the just punishment for those sins, giving His very life for them and for us at the cross.

“Love one another, even as I have loved you.... By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Now, I could conduct a whole Bible study on the “one anothers” of the New Testament, and I want to encourage you to do some of that study on your own.

You’ll see that I’ve included a wonderful infographic from The Overview Bible Project on the back of your music sheets this week. It’s a great resource if you’d like to dig a little deeper into this topic.

But today, I want to direct your attention to a couple of things from that infographic. First, notice how often “love one another” appears. Fully one-third of the times we see “one another” as a command for the church, it’s in the context of loving one another.

I think we can conclude that this is kind of important, don’t you?

But there are 32 other “one anothers” that appear as instructions to those who follow Jesus in faith. You can see them on your sheet, though you might need a magnifying glass to read the references.

And here’s the thing: In every other place where “one another” appears as an instruction to us as Jesus’ disciples, there is an action associated with it.

“Be at peace with one another.” “Accept one another.” “Be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving to one another.” “Confess your sins to one another.” “Serve one another.” “Be subject to one another.” “Bear one another’s burdens.” “Speak truth to one another.” “Pray for one another.” “Teach and admonish one another.”

And I think that all these other “one anothers” are God’s way of telling us HOW to love one another. This is God saying that loving one another isn’t simply a feeling that we have about one another, but rather a set of actions that characterize that feeling.

And it’s no coincidence that fully one-third of those other “one anothers” deal with unity in the church. As we do the things that characterize love for one another, we BUILD unity in the church.

And that connects back to the upper room discourse, too.

After Judas had left the room, Jesus began teaching His true disciples some of His most important lessons. He began by giving them the new commandment, that they love one another, even as He had loved them.

And when He had finished with His teaching, He turned to His Father in prayer. And toward the end of that prayer, He prayed “that they [His disciples] may be one even as We are.”

And then in verse 20 of chapter 17, He prayed for us, too.

John 17:20–23 NASB95

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Perfect them in unity, “so that the world may know that you sent Me.”

There is something powerful about the “one anothers” in the New Testament. As we one-another one another, we show the world that we are different, that we are followers of Jesus.

As we one-another one another, we become perfected in unity. And as we become perfected in unity, we show the world that God so loved the world that He sent Jesus so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life.

The point of loving one another isn’t just so that we’ll all feel happy and content around one another. The point of loving one another is so that the world will see Jesus and know Him as the only one in whom there is true love.

Loving one another is the most powerful thing we can do to spread the message of the gospel. It’s not the only thing. We are certainly called to TELL people about Jesus. But loving one another by one-anothering one another is a powerful way for us to witness to the world.

How will you love one another this week, brothers and sisters in Christ? You’ve got a list of ways to do it. Now, let’s get to work.