Mat 22; 34;40 34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
I am forcing all of us in our weekly meetings to plan for the coming year, so we accomplish some things for God this year and not waste our days. Unless we do something different this year, it is again going to be like last year. Some of you have some plans, some of you are even lazy to plan, or think it is a waste to plan because “I am not going to achieve it anyway,” not even getting any thoughts about what to do.
In today’s passage, the Lord talks about the most important thing we can do in 2022, that has the power to completely transform 2022 for us. In this passage, Jesus singled out one commandment in all of Scripture that must hold first place in our heart and mind. The single most important thing. If we have this, we will accomplish great things we have never done in previous years. If we don’t have this, what we plan, we also will not be able to achieve.
Because unless we obey this single command, the whole Christian life is lived outwardly, forcefully, and becomes a drudgery, a hard, menial, or dull work, to the point of bondage. The reason there is so much rebellion and disobedience to God’s word in our life is evidence we don’t obey this command. May God help us realize the great importance of this command and how, failing here, we fail in everything because this is the one single most important foundational command in all Scriptures.
Now, Jesus is in the temple in the last week of his life. He is popular among the people; they welcomed him, hailing him even as the Messiah, and have great expectations, but the leaders all hate him because of envy, and they see him as a threat. He cleansed the temple and is teaching people there. We have seen his three parables attacking the leaders and the nation of Israel: 1) the two sons a Father commanded to work in the field (religious leaders are like the son who says he will obey but does not obey; publicans or harlots are those who say they will not, but later repent and obey); 2) the vineyard tenants (leaders are the ones who kill the servants, even the son; the kingdom will be taken from you and given to another); 3) the marriage supper (you’re like guests invited to a wedding who refuse to come and therefore are shut out). And Chapter 21, verse 45, says they knew He spoke about them—three parables of doom. This is unbearable for them; they want to kill him immediately, but they feared the people, so these leaders, instead of a direct attack, try to get him into trouble by his own words.
So they counterattack him three times. We already saw two, taking turns: the Pharisees and Herodians tried to show him as an insurrectionist before Rome who tells people not to pay tax, and as a witness, they brought Herodians who could inform Rome directly. But His answer confounded them all, and that failed. If they can’t discredit Him politically, they’re going to try to discredit Him theologically as a religious teacher before the people of Israel. So next, the Sadducees brought an absolutely bizarre/unbelievable situation: if he believes in resurrection, He’s going to be stuck with this bizarre/foolish situation, and the people are going to see what an utterly inept and inadequate teacher He is. But again, His answer confounds, astonishes, and amazes them, and that test failed. And that brings us to the third and final attack we will see today. So we see a political test to put Him in trouble with Rome, a theological test about resurrection to discredit Him before the people, and now it is a spiritual test. This is their last attempt.
We will understand this final question in three headings, following the outline for tomorrow’s sermon (Matthew 22:34–40):
Final Question to Test Jesus
We will ask four questions about this final test.
Firstly, What is the Context of the Final Question?
Verse 34: “But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.” After his response to the Sadducees, the Pharisees heard that. He had silenced them already with the Herodians, now He also silenced the Sadducees, and they heard about it and they gathered together to discuss the situation. The word “silenced” literally means gagged. It wasn’t that they wanted to be silent. They had no choice. The same word is used in Mark 1:25 of silencing a demon, silencing a storm; and in 1 Corinthians 9:9 of muzzling an ox. This was unwilling gagging. They wanted to say more; they just had nothing to say. He brought their argument to an utter end where they were absolutely without another sound, without another thought, without another idea, without any word, and without another retort. He muzzled them, realizing that the more they opened their mouth, the more He would make them look like fools.
The Pharisees saw this, and they had a meeting. Now, they must have had mixed emotions. On the one hand, they would have been glad to see their enemies, the Sadducees, gagged. They would have been very happy to see that terribly disturbing question that the Sadducees had no doubt asked them for years and which they had never answered correctly. They no doubt were glad to see that that had been answered correctly and in their favor and in their behalf. To understand how they must have felt, imagine how a political opposition party would feel if the Lord had publicly silenced the ruling party, making them unable to speak. But on the other hand, their hatred for Jesus was so much greater than their opposition to the Sadducees. They would rather have seen Jesus discredited in this question of resurrection than the Sadducees discredited, because Jesus posed a far greater threat to them than the Sadducees ever did. They were not happy with this; their foes’ unsuccessful attempt to destroy a greater enemy left them dissatisfied. And so it says in verse 34, “they gathered together.” See, they don’t care about the truth of resurrection which Jesus proved, but they want Jesus to be killed. Now, out of that little conclave comes the final question to test him. That is the context for the question.
2. Who Asked the Question?
Verse 35: “Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying.” When all have been muzzled, there must be someone special and bold to ask the final question. He is like that. Verse 35, “One of them”—that is, a Pharisee—“who was a lawyer”—now the word “lawyer” means a law expert, really the same as a scribe. A scribe was one who copied the law, who was an authority on the law, who knew the law, who interpreted the law, who taught the law. The word here may suggest that this guy was a cut above the average scribe, a senior expert. He was a law expert. And he is sent to ask the question on behalf of the rest of the Pharisees.
3. What is the Intention of the Question?
What is the intention? All of you are blinking; I leaked the question paper yesterday only so you can be prepared. What is the intention? Verse 35 says to test him. But if you compare Mark, this guy seems to be interesting. Though he is sent as a representative of the group, who want to test and discredit the Lord, it seems he is a kind of honest man. Sometimes even if you are an honest man, you can get stuck in the wrong group, like Nicodemus. If you see the Mark 12 passage describing the same scene, after Jesus answered his question in a straight-forward way, the man answered, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth . . .” (v. 32); and Jesus responded by telling him that he was “not far from the kingdom of God” (v. 34).
So while he is acting as an emissary for the Pharisees, on his own terms, he seems to have more integrity than they do. He comes with an open mind to hear an answer that he may receive. He was also troubled with this great question concerning this whole matter of how to understand the law. He had heard all the other opinions; but now he wanted to hear the opinion of this wise ‘Teacher.’
So he’s not quite as venomous as the rest, and maybe that’s why he was willing to go boldly. He could sort of kill two birds with one stone. He could play out his role as a Pharisee, and he could also get direct contact and a direct answer for himself that might help him in his own thinking. I think Jesus saw honesty in this man, notice that is why Jesus didn’t treat this man’s question the way He treated the others. He didn’t rebuke the questioner with a statement like, “Why do you seek to test me, you sneaky hypocrite? You are wrong, you phony!” or “I will ask you one question first.” Instead, it seems as if Jesus treated the questioner with dignity and the question with the utmost seriousness. Because Jesus saw some interest in the man, and also a very important question—worthy to be asked.
But even then, he has the intention to test him, as verse 35 says. So he’s not totally honest. The idea is, they want Him to fail the test. They want Him to be discredited. They want Him to lose His popularity. Not asking for guidance, but as an inquisitor cross-examining a suspected heretic.
Now, how will Jesus fail in this question? For Jews, nothing is more important than Moses. Moses, who spoke to God face-to-face as a man speaks to his friend. That sets him apart from everybody else; he was chosen the recipient of the Decalogue, the divine law of God. Moses, the priority writer, who penned the first five books of the Old Testament. Moses was their great hero. Both Sadducees and Pharisees considered nothing more important to them.
If anyone contradicts Moses’ command or says something beyond Moses, they will tag him as a false teacher. Now, the leaders doubted that Jesus attacked Moses’ teaching and that his teaching is beyond Moses. Jesus repeatedly corrected that. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:17, Jesus said, “I want you to know this: I have not come to destroy”—what?—“the law and the prophets but to fulfill them, and not one jot or one tittle shall in any case be removed from this law.”
In other words, Jesus is very sensitive to the fact that He would be accused of attacking Moses, of setting Himself up as a new authority and diminishing the role of Moses. He was sensitive enough to that to say, “I have not come to obviate the law of Moses, I have not come to remove one jot or one tittle,” not one little marking from it.
But they believe that Jesus is a diminisher of Moses. They believe that Jesus comes to postulate something beyond Moses, something above Moses, something greater than Moses. Here they test him, so that he says something greater than what Moses said. They want Jesus to affirm that He has a word that supersedes Moses so that they can accuse Him of being a heretic and an apostate. If they can just get Jesus to say that He supersedes Mosaic authority, He will become a blasphemer, He will discredit Himself, He will become unpopular with the people who revere Moses as the greatest of all.
So they want to put Jesus in a situation to attack the Mosaic law by superseding it, and they believe that He will do that because they saw His teaching as something beyond. That wasn’t true; Jesus always upheld the law of Moses. What He regularly attacked was their tradition which was making the law void. So that’s the approach. So we saw the context of the question, who asked the question, and the intention of the question. This question is not purely to trap Him; the man has a mix of motives (testing Him and also learning), but those who put him up to question, the Pharisees, had no good motives.
4. What is the Question?
Verse 36: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” This means the greatest command in comparison. What kind, importance, what class of commandment is first rank? Which stands above all the rest? This was not a little task. It was a burning question, most debated, among Rabbis. They regularly asked which is the greatest command. This is a question people would have heard many times.
The Rabbis gave a lot of importance to Moses’ commands. In order to keep that in daily life, they brought in a lot of strict and detailed applications, and added traditions and rules—thousands of rules to keep the Sabbath, tithing, worship, and marriage. Their Scribes—professional scholars who studied and taught the Law—taught that there were a total of 613 different commandments that could be drawn out from the Scriptures. They said that 248 were positive commandments (i.e., “Do this; do that”); and 365 were negative commandments (i.e., “Don’t do this; don’t do that”), 365 for each day of the year. Among them they argued which is light and heavy. Based on what was light and heavy, punishment would be decided if you broke it. There was a lot of debate about what was light and what was heavy, what was really important, what wasn’t so important, and so forth and so forth.
They so messed up God’s law with tradition. Jesus, in Matthew 15, rebuked, “You have made the commandments of God of no effect by your tradition.” Another time, such confusion resulted in the minutia of the law being emphasized, while the more important issues of the law were allowed to be neglected. Jesus once rebuked the Pharisees sternly, saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law; justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone” (Matthew 23:23).
Some would have the law of circumcision to be the great commandment, others the law of the Sabbath, others the law of sacrifices. Whatever they believed was greatest, they deeply meditated on those commandments, and allowed their hearts to be affected by that, spent all their zeal and energy to keep that. So now they would try what Christ said to this question, hoping to incense the people against him, in different ways.
Firstly, “You are a great teacher, teaching so many things more than Moses, saying you are bigger than Abraham and others. Just give us one, the greatest law, and it can’t be something old, right?” If he set up something above what Moses said, if Jesus is who we think He is—and that is a man with a huge ego trying to establish Himself as the Messiah—showing himself above Moses, He’s going to say something that supersedes Moses. He’s going to set Himself up as the authority. He’s going to give some new law that comes out of His mouth and thus we’ll know He’s an apostate and He’s a heretic. So what is the great law? Or, and if he should magnify one commandment, they would accuse him of vilifying/degrading the rest. If circumcision, then what about the Sabbath, etc. If he emphasizes some one thing, they can discredit him before the people that he disrespects others that Moses taught.
2. Marvelous Answer of Jesus
Verse 37: “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ Verse 38: This is the first and great commandment. Verse 39: And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Verse 40: On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
What an answer—what an answer! Without any hesitation, or careful preparation, our Lord responds reflexively (naturally). A reflex response is when someone passes their finger near your eyes, and without thinking, you blink. That is the way He responds. You get the sense Jesus did not need to reflect or pause. It was the sounding of a gun in his ear.
We really cannot appreciate this response if you do not grasp the climate of Israel’s teaching at that time. How marvelous this is! The debate for ages has gone on, “Which is the greatest?” One Rabbi saying this and another that, and all had been all about which outward act—circumcision, Sabbath, tithing, which external expression of the law—was the most primary one; and Jesus put it all in perspective by saying, “Love God.” It’s not all about outward acts, rituals, not about God’s rules. It’s not even about loving God’s rules. It’s all about loving God Himself! We must start there—at loving God. It is a condition of the heart. A heart loving God supremely. That is the greatest command.
The amazing thing is He quoted Moses, Deuteronomy 6:5. He answered quoting the Shema. If you see Mark 12:29 in the same parallel passage, He quotes the Shema exactly: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” He did exactly the opposite of what they wanted Him to do. They wanted Him to supersede Moses—He quoted Moses. Not only did He quote Moses, but He quoted the most familiar thing that Moses ever wrote, the Shema.
Jews would have heard this millions of times all their life. Every faithful Jew would say it twice every day, say it in homes, and in the synagogue. You will find this on the front door of Jews, and in a box on his forehead, and on his right hand is this Shema. He takes the heart of their religion. He is saying, “I’m no apostate. I’m no heretic. I’m not coming up with something you didn’t know about.” He is quoting a verse that is most familiar to all of them. “I’m not here to tell you anything different than what Moses told you.”
Firstly, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This speaks of the absolute unity and uniqueness of God, and His covenant relationship with Israel. God being to Israel their covenant God, they should love out of all your being. The being with its love is to be utterly and totally emptied out upon God.
Jesus doesn’t use the word for “love” that would merely mean ‘strong affection’—as if we’re to have warm feelings about God. Rather, He uses the word agape—a word that distinctively refers to a deep and demonstrable love; it’s the love of purpose, it’s the love of will, as opposed to phileō, which is the love of emotion, affection, or eros, which is the love of the physical animal senses, lust. Phileō or eros is mainly emotional and cannot be controlled by us. Agape is love of choice and intelligence on the most noble thing—the love of dedication, the love of commitment, the love that says this is right and this is noble, no matter what I feel. I will express love to God. This is the highest kind of love, the love of purpose, the love of will, the noblest, purest, highest, self-sacrificing love of that which is right and that which is worthy.
How should we live? “With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Three things. Mark adds a fourth: “with all your strength.”
Some see it separately, and some say it means with our whole being. Our Lord is showing us how complete and total that love toward God is to be. It is to be with all the heart—which is the very center of our personality, our inner man. Guard your heart, from which flows all issues of life.
Love with all the soul—the soul is the center of emotions. Our Lord said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful.” It is our very inner being. And it is to be with all the mind—which is the seat of the intellect; our thoughts, our reason, our beliefs. And Mark adds strength; it is with all your energy, all of our physical capacities. Four channels for love to be perfectly balanced. So our intellectual part, our emotional part, our volitional part, and our physical part all come together to love God, to love God with the total being, all that we are.
“Love God with all your heart” means: Find in God a satisfaction so profound that it fills up all your heart. “Love God with all your soul” means: Find in God a meaning so rich and so deep that it fills up all the aching corners of your soul. “Love God with all your mind” means: Find in God the riches of knowledge and insight and wisdom that guide and satisfy all that the human mind was meant to be.
All your longing for joy and hope and love and security and fulfillment and significance—take all that, and focus it on God, until He satisfies your heart and soul and mind.
What Jesus is saying in this is that we are to love God with everything that is in us—a total, complete devotion of all that we are. It is simply calling together all that a person is; with your whole being is what He’s saying, you’re to love God. Notice, they are pushed not together. It doesn’t say, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind.” It says literally that you are to love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind. It’s as if He wants to push them to as wide a possible level as He can. To really love God, that’s the great commandment. The idea is He just collects all the parts of being. He just covers all the words, simply calling together all that a person is with your whole being; your whole self in all its parts and dimensions is to love God. You’re to love God.
The Shema says one true God, utterly unique in His being, glorious in His perfections, and being the most lovable being in the universe, He has graciously condescended to enter into a covenant relationship with Israel. This God who has given Himself in the totality of His unique person to you in covenant love, He expects unrivalled love to Him. As God has given Himself wholly to man in covenant love, so whole man is demanded by God. This is what I expect from My people: you love Me with all heart, soul, mind, strength. We are to love God in a comprehensive way with a love that is as wide as all of our capabilities and capacities, because He loves us like that with His whole heart, soul, and strength. He proved His love by sending His Son for us.
All this emphasizes, God is not interested in a superficial love. God is not looking for people who go through religious ritual. God is not just looking for people who, on the outside, can go through the motions. He looks for sincere, thoughtful, intentional, and heartfelt love.
Our love of God must be a sincere love, and not in word and tongue only. It must be a strong love; we must love Him in the most intense degree. As we must praise Him, so we must love Him, “with all that is within us,” Psalm 103:1. It must be a singular and superlative love; we must love Him more than anything else; this way the stream of our affections must entirely run.
God is so infinite. The heart must be united to love God, in opposition to a divided heart. All our love is too little to bestow upon Him, and therefore all the powers of the soul must be engaged for Him, and carried out toward Him. “This is the first and great commandment,” for obedience to this is the spring of obedience to all the rest; which is then only acceptable when it flows from love. The love of God is the first and great commandment of all, and the summary of all the commands of the first table.
He not only answers the scribe, but says it in a way to indict the leaders and that whole generation of Jews full of external religion. Boy, when He said this to them they were unmasked. What God wants out of you is your heart of love. You have never given that to God. In the next chapter He will tear all their masks. And in chapter 23, I mean, He spells it out in no uncertain terms. Again and again, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites” repeatedly, why? And what is a hypocrite? It’s somebody who has something on the outside and nothing on the inside. They didn’t love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. They were going through the religious motions for what they could gain out of it: self-satisfaction, pride, ego, an appearance of righteousness. Repeatedly in the Old Testament, God rebuked them for their externalism without heart love for God.
Then He didn’t stop with that, verse 39: “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” He quotes from Leviticus 19:18. The second is inseparable. If you want one singular command, I will not give you one without the second. You should never separate whole-soul, total love to God and love to neighbor. So the second is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He assumes we all possess love of self. There is no notion that we need to be taught to love ourselves. We love ourselves. God takes the native tendency in everyone of us and says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Be as concerned for his well-being as you are for your own. His reputation, his needs, his wounds, as you are naturally for your own. Sin has turned you so inward upon yourself that all you will do is love yourself. But if your heart goes out in the kind of love that is required for God, it will also go out in love to those who are made in His image.
I say it is overwhelming because it seems to demand that I tear the skin off my body and wrap it around another person so that I feel that I am that other person; and all the longings that I have for my own safety and health and success and happiness I now feel for that other person as though he were me.
This is inseparably connected to the first, inclusive of all the precepts of the second table. This flows from love for God. When you love God right, you love people right. That’s the idea. That’s basic. Love God, love men—love God, love men. We are to care about others the same way we care about ourselves. We’re to turn it around so that we get lost in others’ needs.
The whole law is simple. It just says, “Love God, love men.” If you love God, you’ll do what He says. If you love men, you’ll do what they need, that’s all. That’s life for us. That’s the whole thing. Because verse 40 sums it up: “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Like all these lights on this roof, if you are looking for the greatest command on which to hang the whole revelation of God’s will and all His commandments, here are two commandments: love to God with all your heart, and love one’s neighbor as you love yourself.
“On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets”—that is, like two nails, two pegs—“hang all the law and the prophets.” Everything else God said in the Old Testament hangs on those two things. This is the sum and substance of all those precepts relating to practical religion which were written in men’s hearts by nature, revived by Moses, and backed and enforced by the preaching and writing of the prophets. All hang upon the law of love; take away this, and all falls to the ground, and comes to nothing. Rituals and sacrifices must give way to these, as must all spiritual gifts, for love is the more excellent way. It is the root and spring of all other duties, the compendium of the whole Bible, not only of the Law and the Prophets, but of the Gospel too, only supposing this love to be the fruit of faith, and that we love God in Christ, and our neighbor for His sake. All hangs on these two commandments; this is the final cause, and everything else must come as an effect of this.
You see, if you love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, you will keep the first four commandments: You will have no other god than the one true God; you will never make an image or bow down to worship it instead of God; you will never take His name in vain; and you will honor His Sabbath day. And likewise, if you love your neighbor as yourself, then you’ll keep the last six commandments: You will honor your father and mother (your first and most important ‘neighbors’); you will not murder your neighbor; you will not commit adultery against your neighbor; you will not steal from your neighbor; you will not bear false witness against your neighbor; and you will not covet what belongs to your neighbor. Jesus’ answer is a complete one—one that sufficiently covers the whole span of God’s law. There is no ‘third greatest commandment’ mentioned. These two are sufficient to cover them all. Someone said everything else in the Bible is an explanation of these two greatest commandments.
The apostle Paul taught the same thing to us. He said, “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:8–10).
And again he wrote, “For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:13–14).
John tells us in his first letter, “If anyone says he loves God and hates his brother he is a liar.”
So these two are the summary. The rest of the commandments are not suspended or rendered superfluous by the two great commandments, as has sometimes been taught, as if “love” were the only law remaining for us to keep. “No creed but Christ, no law but love,” some have said. Not so. The other commandments “hang on” these two and are to be understood as expressions and applications of them. Every commandment in God’s law, in other words, is a way of loving God and/or your neighbor.
We see the Lord’s brilliant answer to this question.
Matthew does not record it for us. Turn to Mark 12:32: “So the scribe said to Him, ‘Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.’”
Hearty approval. He says, “Well said, Teacher… right on, you have spoken on the basis of truth.” He follows hearty approval with a penetrating response: “is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
Though coming to test him, yet this man understood that these two commandments set forth the will of God greater than the details and requirements of all the outward sacrificial system with all its rituals. That is a penetrating insight millions of Israelites never came to understand, and leaders didn’t understand.
Now the response of Jesus: Verse 34: “Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’”
Jesus regarded it as a discreet response, using his mind and not allowing his mind to be numbed by perspectives of mindless conformity to upbringing, culture, religion, and climate. He broke through all those things. He was using his mind before the truth of God’s word. So based on the perception of the understanding of this man’s mind and open confession of it, which most in his generation didn’t see, He says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” A figure of speech, meaning you are near the kingdom of God.
See the wisdom of our Lord. He wants to encourage him and at the same time convict him. He encourages, “You are not far,” compared to the blind generation and your group, so it awakens: “How far? What must I do to enter?” It was meant to encourage him, to draw him. At the same time, to convict, “you are still not inside the kingdom.” Pharisees are light years away, who are just all external, rituals, doing everything to be seen by men, but “you are not like them, but still you are not in.”
Sadly, nothing is said about this lawyer’s response. But the general response of the group is found in Mark 12:34: “But after that no one dared question Him.”
This is the end. We will see next: forget about them attacking. Jesus goes on the offensive and attacks them with one great question, which we will see next week.
So, the final question, answer, and reaction. What do we learn?
Applications (3)
1. Learn from Jesus Himself Why We So Desperately Need Salvation
Learn from Jesus Himself why you and I so desperately need the salvation He is going to accomplish in a week’s time in Matthew’s gospel.
Jesus in a couple of days will be arrested, unjustly condemned, handed over to the Gentiles, they will mock him, spit upon his face, scourge and crucify him, and oh, what infinite sufferings He must have endured on that cross to atone for our sins. It must be a mind-bursting suffering, beyond any creature to grasp. How desperately you and I need Him to suffer on the cross and die?
Why must He die? If the greatest command is there is one God, and we must love that God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and strength, and if transgressing the commandment is sin, now what is the greatest sin any man can commit? The greatest sin is to withhold that love from God, right? Is there anyone sitting here who can say: “Oh Pastor, that doesn’t trouble me because from the day of my birth, I have loved the God of the Bible, awesome creator God, I have loved that with all my energy of my heart, soul, and strength. Every minute, every hour, every day, every month, every year… There has not been a situation where I have put my interest above my neighbor, sister, brother, wife, husband. I have been utterly selfless in my words, plans, and actions, loving my neighbor as myself.” Is there anyone here so deceived that you can say that?
I hope not. Oh, how the greatest command shows the utter depravity of our hearts. Oh, I have not loved God like that one day in my lifespan so far, not one hour. If sin is the breaking of the commandment, and if that is the greatest command, every breath I take I am committing the greatest sin, and deserve the greatest damnation in hell forever. Do you see what depraved, horrible shape we are in? Oh, if that is the greatest commandment, I have been breaking the greatest command, every second of my life, every day, every month. What kind of awesome, infinite oceans and mountains of guilt will fall upon me, out there, stretching out in all eternity, ready to swallow me for all eternity?
Learn from this passage why you and I desperately need what Jesus was accomplishing. Just a couple of days later He will hang on the cross, not a helpless victim, but He is laying down His life, volunteering, taking upon Himself divine wrath on our behalf, welcoming billows of the infinite ocean of wrath, the mountains of guilt created by the sins of people for every second we lived, breathing in the depraved condition of not loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Can you grasp the scope of the wrath Christ would have endured for you and me? All that you and I have to suffer for endless eternity, funneled upon Him, until He cried out, “My God, My God, why did You forsake Me!”
The Shorter Catechism, Q. 84 asks: “What doth every sin deserve?” The answer is: “Every sin deserveth God’s wrath and curse, both in this life, and that which is to come.” What greatest curse this greatest commandment has put upon us! Glory to God for Christ.
Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of law, being made a curse for us.”
Today, if you are sitting here not saved, not knowing your desperate need and the great worth of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, learn today what great need we have for Christ to accomplish what He did on the cross. God’s commandments are steps to climb to heaven, but a mirror to show you are sliding to hell. Does this commandment show how closer you are to hell?
What will you do without Christ before God on the Day of Judgment? Just for a few minutes sit and think: God, who is worthy to be loved with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, who is glorious in Himself, all the universe loves Him, He created you, provided, and sent His Son to redeem you; the greatest commandment is that you love Him. You have a heart that doesn’t allow you to love Him for one second like that. Every breath you look at was poisonous hatred and indifference to Him. How will you stand before that God on the Day of Judgment, when infinite oceans of wrath will fall on you?
Oh, may this greatest commandment open your blind eyes and show you the infinite nature of Christ’s sufferings, how desperately you need that more than anything. In Covid time, what will you do with Omicron and Delta, more severe? If you die, how will you stand like this before God? Run to Christ. See Him hanging on the cross when mountains of your sins poured on Him, and atoning for your sins. Put the weight of your soul on what He has done for you. What arrogance and love for sin that you don’t believe Him still.
When you believe Him, the greatest invaluable mercy is the full, free forgiveness of sins. You have been hating God because you are born in sin; there is only enmity and hatred, fear of God. You cannot love God with that heart. The root of our sinfulness is the desire for our own happiness apart from God and apart from the happiness of others in God. But when you feel your sins forgiven, and reconciled to Him, adopted by Him as His child, He gives a new heart. Then, and not till then, you will love Him with the spirit of adoption. Faith in Christ is the true spring of love to God. They love most who feel most forgiven. “We love him because he first loved us.”
2. Learn What Christ’s Death Was Intended to Produce
Learn from Jesus Himself what His death for sinners was intended to produce in them.
Jesus Christ went to the cross, yes, to atone for our sins and forgive us, but it doesn’t stop there. We are not just to rejoice that our sins are forgiven through His agony on the cross, and then go on living with a heart with 100 other sins. 1 Peter 3:18: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” The aim for Jesus dying for us is that the great and first commandment may be an earnest, passionate goal and reality of our life.
He has forgiven all sins, justified, reconciled, we have peace with God, adopted as children of God. He has given a new heart, for what? That we may love the God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We cannot love God as depraved fallen sinners—we were in the terrible state of hating God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength—but by saving us, forgiving and blessing us with all salvation blessings, giving us a new heart, He infuses us with an ability in the present and future to love God. And that’s what it means in Romans 5: “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit of God, when given to us in salvation, enables us to love God—enables us to love God.
The mark of a believer. A true believer is a lover of God. In Ephesians 6:24, the last verse in Ephesians says, “Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.” Grace to those who love the Lord honestly, who really love Him. And the opposite of that, 1 Corinthians 16:22, it says there, “Cursed are those who love not the Lord Jesus Christ.” Exodus 20 says He punishes the 3rd and 4th generation of those who hate Him.
The great purpose of redemption is to produce this unrivaled love in your heart for God. That is how Jesus fulfills the law. “You shall love that God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” That is the same for Adam, the same for Israel, the same for us, for all eternity. That is why when Jesus called people to Himself: “Anyone who doesn’t love Me more than Father, sister, mother, I will not tolerate sharing your love with the dearest creature.”
He didn’t die so we can go to heaven with a heart full of idolatry and still hate God. He died to get your heart. Has He got it? My greatest desire is, “Lord, I want to love You with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength.” You sit there, “Oh God, my greatest grief is I do not love with all the energy of my heart, mind, soul, and strength. My greatest expectation in heaven is I will love You as I ought to.”
What is rivalling Christ’s place in your heart? May this truth help you to kill it. It is doing the opposite of the redemptive purpose. It is an insult to His death. It is trifling with His agony. Take that idol this morning and go to Calvary. Ask God to smash it. May you love with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Love is the grand secret of true obedience to God. The reason you have so much disobedience and sin in life is that this power of love is missing in your heart. Christ said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and John said, “His commandments are not burdensome.”
How simple are these two rules, and yet how comprehensive! As I said, the practice of Rabbis once they established this is the greatest commandment, they deeply meditated on those commandments, and allowed their hearts to be affected by that, poured their heart into that command into a mound. Daily twice they would repeat and memorize this. We were talking about memorization as a plan; why don’t we do it? Daily repeat this for 365 days:
“‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
They spent all their zeal and energy to keep that.
As a church, let these things sink down into our hearts. It is so easy to be ‘religious’ without loving God! May this teach us God is not interested in outward observances without inward love toward Him. Coming to church, reading the Bible, praying, all those should be expressions of inward love to God. Without that, if we obey His commandments but do not love Him, we’re really not obeying the commandments at all—whatever else we may think.
The first stupendous thing, the greatest and most important thing you can do is love God—love GOD—with all your heart and soul and mind. We have the authority of the Son of God here telling us something utterly stupendous about the origin and design of the entire plan and Word of God. The Scribe only asked what is great; He says greatest and foremost. He doesn’t have to say that, and Jesus doesn’t stop there. On top of that, “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” The Pharisee didn’t ask this. Jesus went beyond what he asked and said more. He seems to want to push the importance and centrality of these commandments as much as He can. He wants us to be stunned at how important these two commandments are. He wants us to stop and wonder.
He wants us to spend more than a passing moment on these things, more than a week or two of preaching. So He adds, “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” That’s enough to raise the stakes here almost as high as they can be raised. We have the greatest commandment in all the revelation of God to humanity. They are the first and the greatest. But they are also the two commandments on which everything else in the Bible depends. “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” I believe it would not be too much to say that all of creation, all of redemption, all of history hang on these two great purposes—that humans love God with all our heart, and that from the overflow of that love we love each other.
Love for God and love for one another. I tear the skin off my body and wrap it around another person so that I feel that I am that other person; and all the longings that I have for my own safety and health and success and happiness I now feel for that other person as though he were me.
It is an absolutely staggering commandment. If this is what it means, then something unbelievably powerful and earthshaking and reconstructing and overturning and upending will have to happen in our souls. Something supernatural. Something well beyond what self-preserving, self-enhancing, self-exalting, self-esteeming, self-advancing human beings can do on their own.
God’s passion for His church is that it be a world of love, a world of love to God and radical, other-oriented love to each other. If we grasp the magnitude of the significance of love to God and love to one another, the great plan for this year must be practical expressions of it in our preaching, life, and our church as GRBC. How can we make this church a world of love, because that is the greatest commandment? Can the world see this place and say, “GRBC is full of people who love God with all their heart and love one another”? This is the Law and the Prophets (and the New Testament). Did Jesus say this is how they will know you are My disciples?
God’s word for us this morning is that we take with tremendous seriousness this season of dealing with love. That we let this picture stun us and remake our priorities. That we get alone with Him and deal with Him about these things. That we not assume that we fully know what love is or that it has the proper centrality in our lives. He is saying: All of Scripture, all of His plans for history, hang—HANG—on these two great purposes: that He be loved with all our heart, and that we love each other as we love ourselves.
3. Learn the Horrible Possibility of Being Near But Not In the Kingdom
Third: Learn from Jesus Himself the horrible possibility of being near but not in the kingdom.
Why was this man here? He came to this question. He wanted to understand. He had some convictions about the law. He saw the heart of religion is not ritual and form. When a man takes seriously the existence of the only true living God, seriously His uniqueness, and the necessity of having heart religion with God, that he is getting near the kingdom.
Have you gotten to this man’s state? Are you assuming that external acts of coming to church, taking communion, reading, just external religion without a heart love for God will take you to heaven? Learn that you get anywhere closer to the kingdom only when you realize the great importance of heart religion.
Have you realized in your life that all outward show will not help and truly become serious about having a heart dealing with God? Until you begin to see God is so holy, your best deeds are a stench. God is holy, and cannot be satisfied without a true heart religion. Oh, my sin has to be resolved. Learn from the words of Jesus the horrible possibility of being near but still outside the kingdom. Near is good, but near is not enough. If this man is near, but does not progress and enter, he will go to the same hell as the Pharisees who were very far from the kingdom. Out of the kingdom, you will go to hell.
When He comes in judgment, what good is it to say, “I was near the kingdom, I was in a reformed church, heard deep sermons, sang songs”? Yes, but the Lord will say, because you always lived externally, “I didn’t know you.” “Did you trust and put the weight of your soul upon Me and My work? Did I change your heart? You came near and so far.” He will say, “Depart from Me, you cursed ones.”
“Not far from the kingdom” is out. Out is hell. Oh, many of you who come near, hearing so many sermons, children, you have come. Near is not enough. You can be near, but not in the kingdom. Don’t rest until you know you are in, because you have gone to Christ, and He has given you a heart to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 