Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 22nd Chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew: Verses 34 – 40:
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The Pharisees were on a desperate mission. Over the past weeks we have seen them question Jesus’ authority to teach, which resulted in Jesus exposing their ill intent and hypocrisy with parables; then they tried to discredit Him with a question designed to trap Him. This did not go well for them; and now they are challenging the Son of God of matters of the Law by asking Him a fundamental question about the greatest commandment.
This question should be familiar to students of the Catechism as the basis for the two tables of the law – To (1)Love God – (2)Love others. Jesus tells us that the first and greatest commandment of the Law is to love God with all that we have. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” I really don’t know just what the Pharisees were expecting Jesus to say, as this is the heart of the great Hebrew creed known as the “Shma.” Shma is Hebrew for hear or pay attention.
The Shma is as follows: [Deuteronomy 6:-4-9] 4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” These words were some of the first words that faithful Israelites taught to their children.
It was as if Jesus was saying, “You all know the answer to this one. You have known the answer since you were a child. Love the Lord your God.”
When we look at the Ten Commandments, we see that the first four - (1)“You shall have no other gods,” (2)You shall not make graven images (3) “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God,” and (4)“Remember the Sabbath Day,” are all ways that we love the Lord our God. We use the Gospel for today to organise these commandments into the first table of the Law; that is the first four commandments which defines “Our relationship to God”. – A Vertical relationship between God and humankind.
You see there is an ultimate truth in the First Commandment that makes it the ‘greatest’ - If we kept the first commandment perfectly, we would automatically keep all the other commandments. Conversely, we cannot break any other commandment without breaking this one first. If we could truly love God perfectly, God wouldn’t need to tell us any of the other commandments - we would simply keep them all. This is the first and greatest commandment.
Then Jesus went on to tell of the second great commandment. This time He quoted from the last verse of (Leviticus 19:18) “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” At that time, Moses had just finished giving a list of ways that the Israelites could care for one another and he summed it up with these words about loving the neighbour.
In this scripture passage we also have a summary of the second table of the Law: (5) Honour your parents; (6) Do not murder; (7) Do not commit adultery; (8) Do not steal; (9) Do not bear false witness; (10) Do not covet anything of your neighbour’s: all six remaining commandments. All these are a summary of our relationship with those around us. – A Horizontal relationship under God between each other.
Jesus went on to say, “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Notice that, according to Jesus, these two statements about love are the foundation of the law – not the Gospel. Even when we talk about loving Jesus, we are talking about the law.
How easy it is to say this law. Love God with all your resources and love your neighbour as you love yourself. This law is easy to say, but impossible to do. The fact is that we often love ourselves with all our resources, love our neighbour when we will receive something in return and love God with our leftovers. When we come before God, we must confess as we did earlier in the service, “We have not loved You with our whole heart and we have not loved our neighbour as ourselves. We justly deserve your present and eternal punishment.”
But God does not punish us. Instead, He shows the love to us that we should show to Him. He shows us that [ἀγάπη] Agape love that is unconditional and has no barriers. In this unconditional love, God sent His only begotten Son into the world to save us from our sins.
This is the Christ who is both David’s Son and David’s Lord. He is David’s Lord by virtue that of the fact that He is true God begotten of the Father from all eternity. He is David’s Son by virtue of the fact that He is true man born of the Virgin Mary. In the Christ, we have both God and man in one person.
This God-man, Jesus Christ, is the one and only man in all of history who loved with pure unconditional (Agape) love. He fulfilled the law and loved God with all His heart and with all His soul and with all His mind. He fulfilled the law and loved His neighbour as He loved Himself. This is that love that kept Christ on the cross through all the suffering and the shame. This is the love that Paul talked about when he wrote to the Romans and said, [Romans 5:8] “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Only one man in all of history ever loved with pure Agape love. That man is the God-man, Jesus Christ. Only He was able to fulfill the law of love and love God with all His heart and with all His soul and with all His mind. Only He was able to start with the foundation of Agape love and build a life of perfect righteousness.
Now Jesus Christ makes that righteousness and that love available to us. He makes them available to us because His love extended to the cross. As His love for us kept Him on that cross, the holy wrath of God assaulted Him for our sins. In His love, He sacrificed Himself in order to give us forgiveness, life, and salvation.
We know His sacrifice was perfect because His love was too powerful for death. Jesus did not remain in the grave, but rose in triumph over sin, death, and the devil.
Now He transforms our sinfulness into His righteousness. He changes our selfish lovelessness into His selfless love. He pours His love into us even as He once poured forth His blood from the cross. This is the Gospel – that God pours forth His love onto and into us.
The direction of the love is one way that the law differs from the Gospel. When the direction of the love is from us to others, then we are talking law. When the direction of the love is from God to us, then we are talking Gospel. We often fail to love others. God never fails to love us.
Even as God pours that love into us, He also pours that love through us. God’s love reaches through us and touches our neighbour. The Holy Spirit uses our everyday activities to love our neighbour. Our job is no longer just a job. Instead, it is a work that we do not only for our employer, but also for Jesus. When we clothe and feed our family, it is not just our family that we feed and clothe, but also our Lord. For on the Last Day, Jesus will say, [Matthew 25:40] “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” The Holy Spirit can even use these everyday acts of love to bring the God News of salvation to the people we meet as we live out our lives in this world.
There was a time that each of us hated God as an enemy. Now He fills us with His love and makes us His beloved children. Once, we were not a people. Now we are the people of God. Once, we were the slaves of sin. Now we are the free people of Heaven. Once we were subject to God’s eternal judgment. Now we are subject to God’s eternal love. God’s love has conquered evil and made us His children forever. Amen
The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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