WHICH COMMANDMENT IS THE GREATEST OF ALL?
Chapters 21 & 22 of Matthew's Gospel are full of the confrontation between Jesus and the authorities in Jerusalem. For the past few weeks we have seen Jesus describe his adversaries in three different parables and now they are asking him three questions. We heard the first one last week. Jesus had taken all their questions about his authority to do what he was doing. He had confounded them by answering a question designed to trip him up and get him in trouble with the people and the Roman authorities concerning taxes. Next he was asked a difficult question about the resurrection
That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. "Teacher," they said, "Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?" Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead-- have you not read what God said to you, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living." When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching. (NIV)
He puts the Sadducees in their place by pointing out their errors in thinking and teaching by noting His Father is God of the LIVING. In that context he is God of all who have ever lived because He is above all time and all who have ever lived are alive to Him. The third question that comes at him is about which is the Greatest Commandment of the law. When that question was answered He confronted them with a question about the Son of David being the Messiah and then He confounded them so that at the end of the exchange no one dares to ask him any more questions.
The greatest commandment concerns the confession of faith that every Jew recites daily, from Deuteronomy 6: 4-5 known as the "Shema" which is the Hebrew word for Hear. "Shema y'israel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai echod!"
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD, and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might".
That is the obligation of everyone and a second commandment is like it, from Leviticus 19:18;
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
The love of God is the "greatest" demand; but the love of neighbor is "like" it. It is no less an obligation. In the relationship that we should have to God and neighbor the scribes and Pharisees had showed by their behavior that they regarded what their neighbor thought of them more important than what God thought of them. In the New Testament, which was written in Greek, there are two words used for the English word LOVE. These are Philia and Agape. There are also other Greek words for love, which are Erosand Storge.
The definitions for the words in their verb form are:
Storge = Affection
Erotao = Sensual desire
Phileo = personal attribute, feeling, brotherly
Agapao = deliberate assent of the will as a matter of principle, duty. As you can see there can be different situations when this word love might apply. And scripture gives us different occasions when these words could be used. If you read the Song of Solomon, in the wisdom literature section of the Bible, and without a doubt you could categorize the love talked about there as "Erotao" love, because the author expresses his desire for his loved one. And it’s the most misused interpretation of the word love used in our culture. This can be associated with what the writer of the first letter of John calls the love of the world (the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life [1 John 2:15-17]. These things are in direct contravention to the things of God. The love that Jonathan and David had for each other, as recorded in 1 Samuel 18:1, can be classified as the "Philia" love or brotherly love. St. Paul uses the word Philadelphos to speak of the brotherly love that should exist between the brothers and sisters in the church. We need to precisely understand where a person is coming from when we speak of love. Unfortunately, we have not taken up the use of the "Agape" love like we should. or the love that men have for each other, in combat. If you have seen the movies like “Blackhawk Down” or “Lone Survivor” you have idea of the sacrificial love that we tend to overlook. The real love that we should be concerned with, the Agape-love like that exhibited by Jesus on the cross which is an act of the will. It is this sacrificial type of love that is used to describe the love that Almighty God has for his people. The writers of the New Testament used this Agape-love to describe the love with which God so loved the world.
This is especially evident in the Gospel of John and the 1st epistle of John. Through this writer we have come to know that “Theo esti Agape” - God is Love and that he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. [1 John 4:16]. When you really stop to think about it, the cross of Jesus Christ is the symbol of God's love for us. The overwhelming realization of Almighty God's love is an awesome experience and it helps one to understand the command of Jesus to his disciples down through history to Love each other as he has loved us.
[John 13:34-35] "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."
The love he has for us is a sacrificial and compassionate love.
[John 15: 12-13]: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends".
There were Medals of Honor given to men who laid down their lives for their buddies by throwing themselves on grenades. The ultimate sacrifice without physically dying is dying to self. If we would glorify God, worship him and praise him in spirit and truth then we must die to self and follow the Love command of Jesus. Sacrificial love has transforming power. I have come to realize the overwhelming power of Forgiveness and Love. If you ever wanted to tell someone what the Gospel message was all about then read them the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which is really about the Forgiving Father.
Brothers and Sisters, Forgiveness is powerful. It brings new life where once there was death. I've seen men, on Kairos weekends in prison, who hated each other enough to kill each other reconciled through the forgiving Love of Jesus Christ. Once we come face to face with Jesus and his Command to Love each other, forgiveness must and should flow or we stand in disobedience and rebellion to his command. This is not a suggestion from Our LORD, this a direct order, as we are fond of saying in the military. It is matter of our willfully loving God, our neighbor and one another. By one another I mean those Brothers and Sisters of the household of faith that claim to be Christian.
This new command is pointed directly at those who would be his disciples. We must discipline ourselves to willfully love each other. And the word for Love that John used is Agape. Love that is associated with God and Jesus, a sacrificial love. Jesus wants us to love one another with the same kind of love that he first loved us. That is really going to be some kind of hard thing to do. When we look back at the great commandment and its components, we see that it has three parts. We are to love God with our hearts, souls, and minds. To love God with all our heart means with our whole being, with all that we have and all that we are. In the Bible, the heart is used to refer to the hidden springs of the personal life. It is the inner being, the wellspring of all human actions. The soul comes from the Greek word Psyche, from which we derive Psychology, and refers to the “Breath of life” which God breathed in to humankind. Soul is the animating principle of life that gives life to the body. To love God with our minds means, we do not leave our brains at the door when we come in here. Salvation is NOT achieved through a pre-frontal lobotomy. When we study the Bible we also pray. Maybe some of us are afraid to think about our faith because we think it can’t stand the scrutiny. Let me assure you IT CAN. Faith that goes untested grows weak. Faith is like lifting weights it gets stronger through exercise. We must be able to articulate our faith if we ever expect to stand against all that attacks that are out there. Jesus wants our love to be like his sacrificial, overwhelming and total. He meets us where we are and comes to carry us where we have not been before. Like the Father in the parable who ran to meet his son as he was returning home. He meets us with Love and Forgiveness that surpasses anything that we can muster. Our Father gives us a chance to practice the love [Agape] that he wants us to have, by putting us in families where we have the opportunity to learn that kind of love that he has shown us. In Paul's letter to the Colossians he tells us:
“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the LORD has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love [Agapeo], which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3: 12-14)
A little further on in the letter to the Colossians and in his letter to the Ephesians Paul tells Husbands that they should love [Agape] their wives as Christ loved the church. By setting the example in the household and family for sacrificial love, husbands have the awesome responsibility of being the head of the family, as Christ is the head of the church. When that kind of Love is exhibited in the family it becomes easier for that type of Love to flow into the church and into the world around us. For as the song says “They will know we are Christians by our Love.” Compassion is not a buzzword it is an important and integral part of every disciple.
Now we can look at this command as something we can take or leave but that would be foolish because it is a sovereign claim by a sovereign LORD on our lives, if we would carry the name Christian. The early church took this command to heart and made it a hallmark of its corporate life. Pagans would say, "Look at those Christians, see how they love each other." The new commandment is to love one another. It is possible to obey this command only because Christ loves us as the Father loves him and Jesus teaches us how to love. This love is possible because of the new life we have been given as the result of Christ's death and resurrection. On the cross, Christ put to death the power of evil. We are baptized into his life and into his way of Love. Is it a coincidence that the church has adopted the “Way of Love” a year before the turmoil of coronavirus, politics and racial turmoil arrived in 2020?
Ian Pitt-Watson wrote in his book A Primer for Preachers that loving places value on the thing or person loved. His three-year-old daughter had a rag doll given to her for Christmas that became her favorite toy. It went everywhere with Rosemary. It finally became so raggedy that they thought of throwing it away, but they knew it would break her heart if they did. They soon realized that the doll and Rosemary came as a package deal. If you loved Rosemary then you loved her doll also. John writes that if anyone says that they love God and they hate their brother or sister then they are lying about loving God. [1 John 4:20] If you love me, then love my rag dolls, says God; including the one you see when you look in the mirror. That is the greatest commandment.
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B. BACKGROUND NOTES:
1. DEFINITION: LOVE (Heb. 'ahaba; Gk. 'agape). Chiefly represented in the Scriptures as an attribute of God and as a Christian virtue. Its consideration, therefore, belongs to both theology and ethics.
2. An Attribute of God. According to the Scriptures, God has feeling, affection. We must derive our conceptions of God from the special revelation that He has given of Himself, and this declares His love as strongly as His existence. It is held by some to be inadequate to speak of love as a divine attribute. "God is love" <1 John 4:8,16>. The Scriptures contain no equivalent statements with respect to other qualities of the divine nature. Love is the highest characteristic of God, the one attribute in which all others harmoniously blend. The love of God is more than kindness or benevolence. The latter may be exercised toward irrational creatures, but love is directed toward rational, personal beings. The eternal love of God has never been without its object, a fact upon which we receive some light from the Scripture revelation of the threefold personality of God. The gracious love of God to men, even to sinful men, is most strongly declared in both the OT and NT. The love of God underlies all that He has done and is doing, although many facts exist that we cannot reconcile with His love on account of our limited understanding. The highest disclosure and most complete proof of divine love is in redemption. The reality and power of this love are properly apprehended only under the influence of the Holy Spirit. "The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us".
3. A Christian Virtue. Love (Gk. 'agape; NASB and NIV, "love"). The only word in the Bible translated charity means love. It is affection, tender and passionate attachment, a sentiment of our nature excited by qualities in a person or thing that command our affection; a virtue of such efficacy that it is said to be the fulfilling of the law. Its absence invalidates all claims to the Christian name. It is the antithesis of selfishness. Luther calls it "the shortest and longest divinity." It is active, and dissatisfied if not blessing others. Christian love is piety, the greatest boon that God can give, for "God is love." "In it all human duty is summed up". Love is the first named element in the composite "fruit of the Spirit" [Gal. 5:22].
C. DOCTRINAL OR TEACHING POINTS
1. The Greatest Commandment is total, selfless Love of God and neighbor. This is the fundamental difference between legalism and the teaching of Jesus. The 613 prescripts of the Jewish Law are not all equal. Keeping them is meaningless unless one gives oneself to God and neighbor.
2. Jesus’ reply does not identify the love of God with the love of neighbor, but he says that one is as urgent as the other. The authenticity of one is dependent upon the authenticity of the other. They are so related to each other that one cannot claim to love God unless one loves the neighbor.
3. Jesus is the incarnation of this greatest of the commandments. His whole life reflects the total, obedient gift of himself to his Father and the loving compassion of the good shepherd to those in need. Our love of God and neighbor should be a response to the love that God first loved us. That love was exhibited in the giving of his Son who in turn was the incarnation of that love.
D. APPLICATION/DISCUSSION:
1. This idea of compassionate love for the poor and needy was formed in the mentality of the people of Israel from their earliest days in the desert. They were to be compassionate because Yahweh was compassionate. As we heard in the reading from Exodus they were not to afflict the foreigner in their land and they were to be generous toward their own people, who were in need.
2. Jesus provided many examples, in his own actions, by reaching out to tax collectors, sinner, the lame, the blind, the outcast and the lesser people of the society. When he gave the answer to the question of the greatest commandment he had already lived it out and given an example.
3. As Christians who have received Christ’s Spirit in Baptism we have the power and the call to live as Jesus lived. He points out that the one in need is the one to whom we can be a neighbor.
4. Jesus challenges us to look beyond our immediate families and friends. We can look to our workplace, our school, our church family and our neighborhood for people who need a word of encouragement from us. He didn’t promise us a rose garden and say it would be easy, only that it would be possible, in his Spirit.
5. The whole purpose of life is to lead us to the final and ultimate truth that God is the one who loves us and can fully satisfy us. God's love meets the deepest needs of our life. I find that Christians resist that truth. They do not want to believe that. They do not even want to take love from God because they are so insistent that it comes from people. But when you try to meet your love needs with people, you find out that those needs cannot be fully met, and you feel lonely. You can be with people who are trying to love you with all their hearts and yet be lonely. Only God himself meets love needs and that is why we have to start with God.
6. QUESTIONS:
a. In what ways can the deep love of God described by Jesus be seen in our lives?
b. In what sense do the “Law and the Prophets “depend on love?
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Ray Stedman writes about a lady in Guatemala who was obedient:
Last week I received a letter from two of our missionaries in Guatemala, Ron and Gretchen Bruno. Gretchen wrote of an incident that had encouraged her greatly. A poor widow in one of the congregations in Guatemala was down to her last twenty cents and without food. She began to pray about her problem. As she was praying, she felt a deep conviction that God was telling her to go to the large supermarket in town the next day and fill up several carts with groceries and take them to checkout stand #7 for check out. This was not just a vague feeling on her part but a deep, Spirit-born conviction. She went to the supermarket the next morning, loaded enough groceries into carts to last two or three months, and took them to checkout stand #7. Just as she got there the cashier closed the stand to go out to lunch. She suggested that the woman take her groceries to another stand, but the woman said, "No, I cannot. My Father told me to take these through checkout stand #7." So she waited while the clerk went to lunch and came back again. The clerk was surprised to see the woman still there, and started to check out her groceries. Just then an announcement came over the loudspeaker: "This is our seventh year of business and we are pleased to announce that whoever is checking out at checkout stand #7 gets free groceries."
Now I am not telling you to do what this woman did. What I am saying is that we are to believe that God cares for us, that he is a loving Heavenly Father, and he has a thousand and one ways of meeting our needs, but he hardly ever does the same thing twice! The unchangeable fact is that God loves us. We belong to him.
The Rev. Dr. Kurt Miller
21st Sunday After Pentecost-Year A [25 October 2020]
Proper 25 [St. Augustine’s]
Deuteronomy 34: 1-12
Psalm 90: 1-6
1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8
Matthew 22: 34-46
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