Seeds for 12/22/2023 - Matthew 22:34-40
Scripture: Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Observation: The Great Commandment is so familiar, but let’s take a look just the same and see what we find.
Jesus answers the way He wants to, not strictly the way He is asked. Prompted to provide the greatest commandment—singular—Jesus says:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (Deut. 6:5)
But He insists on adding a second.
Love your neighbor as yourself. (Lev. 19:18b)
This suggests that while the “first and greatest” is just that, His answer is inadequate without the addition. Remarkable. Also, He says, “the second is like it.”
What might Jesus mean? Let’s think it through, seeing how close to the text we can adhere.
First, we note the verb in each commandment is the same: Love. There are plenty of verbs we could imagine being central to the greatest commandment—obey, serve, worship, give, exalt. But “love” is the verb in both. Love goes beyond affection and sentiment to faithfulness and action. In asserting that the second is like the first, Jesus tells us that our central action toward God is the model for our central action toward our neighbor. The posture for worship and the posture for service are one and the same, lending a rich meaning to the term “worship service.”
A simple visual for this is the cross, with its vertical and horizontal dimensions. The love of Jesus toward the Father ascends vertically while love for the world expands horizontally. They both originate from the same center, the same heart. In Jesus, “vertical” love for God the Father cannot help but be channeled “horizontally” to neighbor as well.
Second, these two commands are alike because of their capacity to summarize the whole Law. Immediately following these two quotations, Jesus asserts that the entirety of the Law hangs on these. All of the specific precepts in the Law can be summarized in just two commandments: Love your God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself. We’re not being true to these two commandments if we fill them with meaning and morals that are foreign to the whole counsel of God in scripture. Yet all of that spiritual and ethical counsel may be made portable in just these two commands. The Ten Commandments illustrate this plainly, as the first four give specificity to the command to love God and the last six clarify what love of neighbor looks like.
One way to ask this question is, “according Christianity, what is the meaning and purpose of life? What is the good life?” And the answer can be summarized thus: “Love your God and love your neighbor. That’s the life God wants for you.”
Application:
How does the “vertical” love for God inform and influence our “horizontal” love for neighbor and vice versa?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, shed the love of Jesus abroad in my heart, that I may love you and love others in a way that pleases you. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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