The Greatest Commandment - Matthew 22:34-46
I enjoy the college football season, but probably the worst part of watching college football is dealing with the commercials. During the college football season, there was a recurring commercial that kept playing: It was a commercial that concluded with this statement: “love has no labels.”
I think it might have even been a series of commercials and it has a strong political message. Those commercials frustrated me, but not for the reasons you probably think. I was frustrated that someone was trying to educate me on morality. What frustrated me was the overall message that love can be whatever you think it is.
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But the really ironic thing is the statement, “love has no labels” is actually defining love to mean whatever you want it to mean. Is love simply an emotion and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed?
Maybe 40 years ago the majority of Americans would have objected to the statement, “love has no labels.” Are we really smarter and more enlightened now than people were then? C.S. Lewis had a great term for this: he called it “chronological snobbery.” Just because current technology is more advanced than it was 40 years ago doesn’t necessarily mean that the human race is more intelligent.
And so I want you to wrestle with this question: Can love be whatever we want it to be? The two greatest commandments according to Jesus Christ both deal with love. Who you love determines how you love.
Who Do You Love? (vv. 34-38)
Remember, this whole chapter of Scripture has been various people putting Jesus to the test. They want to catch him in something, so they can discredit him.
The Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t like each other, but they shared a mutual disdain for Jesus Christ. The Sadducees had failed to trap Jesus so now it was the Pharisees turn to try and trap him. So, the Pharisees gather together. I imagine them huddling up like a football team determining the next play they’re going to run.
And a Pharisee lawyer asks, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
Jesus answers his question by telling him the greatest commandment. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6:5.
Sometimes folks break up the heart, the soul, and the mind and they say you should love God with your affections, will, and your intellect. But I really don’t want to get into the difference between the affections, the will, and intellect because I don’t want us to miss the point. The overall point is you must love God with all that is within you.
The Lord must be your top priority. He’s more important than your family, friends, and success. God demands your devotion. Jesus actually makes a very clear distinction between our American conception of love and Christian love. And it’s found in two little words, you shall.
Isn’t it interesting that Jesus doesn’t say “love the Lord when you’re at the peak of an emotional high” or “love the Lord when you finally feel like reading the Scriptures” or love the Lord when you finally get that warm and fuzzy feeling in your heart?” He doesn’t give you any options. In fact, loving God is active and it requires effort. Loving God is something you do even when you don’t feel like it. It’s a duty. It’s something all people are called to do.
And yet at the same time we must love him with a sincere love. We’re often taught that sincerity drives duty. We do things because we love to do them. But that’s not true. The opposite is true. Duty fuels sincerity. You’ve met someone that you didn’t think you’d like the first time you met, but the more time you spent with him you realized… you actually do like him.
I once heard a story about an Indian man speaking with his American friend about arranged marriages. He said, “your marriages begin hot and end up cold. But our marriages begin cold and end up hot.”
I’m not advocating for arranged marriages! My point is this: when we devote ourselves to something, often our affections for it grow. The same is true for loving God. Do you want to cultivate a love for God? Spend time with him in prayer. Spend time with him in his Word.
That’s how you grow a sincere love for God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. You cultivate a love for him through what is often referred to as, “the ordinary means of grace.” The ordinary means of grace are the Word, sacraments and prayer.
Sunday worship should be an expression of your love for the Lord. If you love him and know he saved you by his grace, well, he deserves to be worshipped.
I pray that our love for God is sincere. No one appreciates a fake person. Someone that just goes through the motions. The great English Puritan John Owen called those that said they loved God but didn’t pursue him “professors.” That is, they professed faith but didn’t actually love God. How many people are professors in Florence? Don’t be a professor.
Jesus warned us of these people when he quoted Isaiah and said they honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.
Interestingly, this is what the first table of the 10 commandments was all about. Have no other gods before me, do not make for yourself a carved image, do not take the Lord’s name in vain, keep the Sabbath.
Put the Lord first. Don’t worship other things. Honor the Lord with your lips and worship and rest in him on Sunday. The Lord should be at the center of who you are as a person. He is fully yours and you are fully His. You should identify with him. That’s love. Your love for God will fuel your love for others.
How Do You Love? (vv. 39-46)
Interestingly, the Pharisee lawyer only asked Jesus for the great commandment in the law. He didn’t ask for the second, but Jesus offers it to him anyway.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The golden rule. Often you’ll hear people refer to it as “treat others the way you want to be treated.” But that really doesn’t go as far as Jesus goes. Treating others the way you want to be treated sounds extremely transactional. He says love your neighbor as yourself. Treating others the way you want to be treated is loveless. Loving your neighbor requires commitment and sacrifice because it often hurts.
And it’s hard to love someone else as much as you love yourself. Because your problems are the most important problems. But the truth is, we’re all guilty of this and so Jesus calls us to radically love our neighbors. The love you have for yourself is the love you should be willing to give to your neighbor.
Loving your neighbor as yourself means giving them the grace that you think you only deserve. The grace that we think we deserve is often the grace we’re unwilling to give. I feel like that’s especially true for those of us that are married.
We expect our spouses to treat us graciously, but we’re not willing to do that for him or her. It’s amazing how grace, love, and forgiveness can bring people together. If there is unresolved tension in a close relationship, show them love. Even if they don’t deserve it. Because you’ll be reflecting the love of God. He loved even when it hurt, we should too. That doesn’t mean be a doormat and let people walk all over and call it love. But loving your neighbor often requires you to do things you don’t feel like doing.
This exchange is also recorded in the gospel of Luke chapter 10 but Luke records some additional details. Right after Jesus tells the Pharisee lawyer to love his neighbor as himself he asks a question.
He says, who is my neighbor? That question was Jesus’s springboard for the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan is the parable that Jesus tells about a Jewish man who was attacked by robbers and several men walked by him suffering on the opposite side of the road, except the Samaritan - who took care of him.
Interestingly, at the end of that parable Jesus looks at this Pharisee lawyer and asks him, “who was this man’s neighbor?” and he tells him, “the one that showed him mercy.”
The Samaritans and Jews had nothing to do with each other. They didn’t like each other, and yet, in Jesus’s parable it was the Samaritan was an exemplary neighbor because he showed mercy to his enemy.
In other words, our neighbors are even those who are our enemies. It’s easy to respect and love the people we like. It’s tough to love people we don’t like. Those who we don’t enjoy being around are the very people we must love.
You see, we should be quick to show love and mercy because that’s what the Lord has done for us. If you’re a Christian it’s only because of the grace and mercy of God. The grace and mercy that we have been recipients of is the same grace and mercy we should be willing to give.
Your spouse is going to wrong you. Your kids are going to annoy you. Your friends are going to anger you. It’s in those moments that love is difficult but we’re called to do it. But the Lord doesn’t ask us to love. ‘You shall’ love your neighbor.
Again, it’s not optional. It’s not an “if I have some extra time on my hands” sort of thing. The Christian’s default position is supposed to be one of love. Jesus says, On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. Jesus summarized the entire Old Testament law in two simple commandments: love God and love others.
The Puritan Matthew Henry takes it a step further. He says, “All the law is fulfilled in one word, and that is, love.” Everything can be summarized in one word: love. If you cultivate your love for God everything else will work itself out. You’ll want to love others, because you love God. Loving God will be your fuel for loving others.
And then we have this interesting account in verses 41-46. Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees and asks them a question. He asks them, What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” The question was simple and straightforward because any good Jew would know that the Christ or the Messiah would be a descendant of King David. Psalm 110 was a popular Messianic Psalm.
David wrote what Jesus quotes,
“‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
The key to understanding Psalm 110 is the phrase, The Lord said to my Lord. What does that mean exactly? David actually uses two different words that both translate into English as Lord. The Hebrew reads, Yahweh said to my Adonai. Yahweh was the covenant name that God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. And Adonai was understood to be a reference to the Messiah.
The easiest way to understand these words is to consider them in this way: The Lord said to my Christ or Messiah. In Jewish culture the Father was always greater than his offspring. How can David look to one that is to come for salvation? That’s the question that Jesus is posing to the Pharisees.
You see, King David recognized something that the Pharisees failed to recognize and many people still today fail to recognize.
David knew he needed his sins to be forgiven. He knew no matter how great the nation of Israel grew under his leadership - it wasn’t enough for his sins to be forgiven. He needed a once for all sacrifice to remove his guilt. He knew he needed the work of Jesus Christ. We look back at the person of Jesus Christ for salvation, but David looked forward to him. The entire sacrificial system pointed to Jesus.
David didn’t need to be physically saved. He needed to be saved spiritually. This is what Jesus was trying to allude to. He was trying to lead the Pharisees to this conclusion. He was trying to show them that they needed to be saved from their sins.
But they hated Jesus. They were too prideful to ask Jesus to explain Psalm 110 because they were supposed to be the ones with the answers. In order to get the answer, they’d have to humble themselves. And rather than doing that, they left in silence. Jesus knew that a sincere love of God was absent from the lives of the Pharisees.
This portion of Scripture is really interesting because there’s three parts to it. There’s the command to love God, there’s the command to love others, and then there’s this episode with Psalm 110 that follows. Verses 34-41 all deal with love. But then you have verses 41-46 - where Jesus asks the Pharisees about Psalm 110.
Earlier I said, who you love determines how you love. If you love God, you’ll love others well and showing mercy is central to loving others. The greatest act of love and mercy was Jesus offering himself on the cross for the sins of the world.
Here’s how I want to challenge you this morning: If the cross of Christ is the most loving and merciful act of all time, then the most loving and merciful thing you’ll ever do is share that good news. Sharing the gospel is the most loving thing you can ever do for someone else.
That’s why Jesus took the Pharisees to Psalm 110. He was testifying of himself! He was trying to share the gospel with them which was the most loving thing he could do for them.
If people are dying in their sins, isn’t it unloving to know the gospel and choose to never talk about it?
If you love God and others well, you’ll love them enough to share the gospel with them. What does it profit a man to gain the world and forfeit his soul?
The gospel message is a message of love. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The point of John 3:16 is the depth of God’s love. Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross. What are you willing to sacrifice for the gospel? Or do you just capitulate to shallow fake love that just tells people what they want to hear?
At the beginning of my sermon I asked if love can be whatever you want it to be? The answer is of course not. God defines love. The second you define love independently from God is the moment you lose it altogether.
A definition of love apart from God isn’t really love. Love does have a label and his name is Jesus Christ. Are you willing to wear it?