Matthew 22:34-40 Introduction This morning we come to the last of three attempts to trap Jesus in His words. In the first passage it was the Pharisees who sent their disciples along with the Herodians to ask Jesus a question about paying taxes to Caesar. Last week we saw the Sadducees coming to Jesus with a question about the resurrection. And now this week, it will be the Pharisees again. Let’s remember that for Jesus, this is never just about winning the argument (though He always does). The enemies of Jesus ask questions in order to trap Him. They’re not really concerned to know the answer. But in all of the answers that Jesus gives, He is concerned that we should know the answer, and that we should discern in His words the beauty, and the power, and the authority of God’s truth. We must not simply be spectators, watching the debate and rooting Jesus on. Whenever Jesus opens His mouth to speak, we should have our mouths open, as it were, waiting to be fed. I. Matthew 22:34–36 — But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer [an expert in the Law of Moses], asked him a question to test him. * “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” Now we don’t have to be suspicious people by nature to wonder where the trap is in this question. We know the Pharisees’ intent, but their plan may be a little less clear – at least to us. One commentator actually suggests that there’s really no trap here at all (Lenski). Another commentator says that we can discover the trap in the Pharisees’ conviction that all of God’s commands are equally great (Bruner). But most commentators point out that by the calculation of the Pharisees, there was a total of 613 commandments in the law of Moses, and so in light of this massive number of commandments, it was helpful for the Pharisees to categorize these commandments according to levels of “importance.” In other words, some commandments were more “weighty” than others (even Jesus said so; 23:23), and in many cases you could determine the weightier commandments just by the weightier penalties. But there was still room for plenty of disagreement among the religious leaders on which commandments were lighter, and which commandments were weightier, and which commandments were the weightiest of all. So maybe the trap here is that whatever answer Jesus gives, He’ll risk “pleasing some at the expense of alienating others” (France). But is that really a “trap” – to get Jesus to side with some Pharisees against other Pharisees? What’s really going on here? What’s really the Pharisees’ agenda? Notice that the lawyer doesn’t ask for a list of the weightiest commandments. “Which is the great commandment in the Law?” Which is the single most important commandment in all the Law? *

On the one hand, we have the group of Pharisees consulting together and agreeing on another “test”; but on the other hand, we have the single spokesperson who actually asked Jesus the question. In Mark’s account, he mentions only the lawyer, and not the larger group of Pharisees. We learn from Mark that the lawyer was really very sympathetic to Jesus and even that he was “not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:28-34). But Matthew isn’t as interested in the sympathetic lawyer as he is in the larger group of plotting and scheming Pharisees. The lawyer may not have been asking this question with malicious intent, but we can be sure that the rest of the Pharisees were (cf. Carson, Lange).

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And I don’t think the point here is which commandment beats all the others out on a scale of one to ten, but rather which commandment best comprehends and summarizes all the rest (Schnackenburg; referenced in Bruner). The rabbis said that in two places in the Prophets the entire law was summed up in one principle (cf. France).  Amos 5:4 — For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live.”  Habakkuk 2:4 — The righteous shall live by his faith. These are prophetic summaries of the Law, but now the Pharisees want to know which of the actual commandments in the Law best summarizes all the rest of the commandments. Now think about it, how many possible answers could there really be to a question like this? All we really need is Moses’ equivalent to Amos and Habakkuk. Surely the answer can’t be that hard to figure out! There’s a very famous passage in the Law that begins with the Hebrew word for “hear,” or “listen” – “shema” – and so this passage has become known as the Jewish “Shema.” The most well known part of the Shema is the first two verses:  Deuteronomy 6:4–5 — “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. The Shema was carefully recited by observant Jews twice every day – once in the morning, and once in the evening. A copy of the Shema was kept in the little mini boxes (phylacteries) that were worn by observant Jews, and it was also written on the doorposts of their houses. There was no other commandment in all the Law of Moses that could possibly be more famous and well known than this one. Furthermore, perhaps the most important doctrine of Judaism was its monotheism – the teaching that there is only one God (against the polytheism of every other culture of the day). The Shema explicitly stated this one, all important truth (“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one”), and then it drew from this one truth an all important command. Since God is one, therefore, there can be no other god that competes for our love. Since God is one, we must love the LORD our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our might. When a command like this flows from the chief truth about God, this would seem to make the great commandment in the Law somewhat obvious. And now add to all of this the fact that this commandment in the Shema also reminds us of the first of the Ten Commandments:  Exodus 20:2–3 — I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. The Shema sounds very much like the summaries of the Law in Amos and Habakkuk. In Luke, when Jesus asked another lawyer for a summary of what the Law required if he would have eternal life, the lawyer responded with the Shema, and Jesus said to him: “You have answered correctly” (Luke 10:25-28). The point is, was there really any other competition for the greatest commandment in the Law? Was there really any question in the Pharisees’ mind about the answer Jesus would give?

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II. Matthew 22:37–38 (cf. Mark 12:29-33) — And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” So there we have it in the plainest language possible. The sum total of all that God requires of us is to love Him. The point of every single duty and obligation that God has ever been pleased to require of us is that we might faithfully love Him. Apart from love for God, it’s impossible for us to say that we’ve ever kept a single one of God’s commandments. And yet on the other hand, apart from the keeping of God’s commandments, it’s impossible for us to say that we have ever loved God. And so it’s especially here that we feel the condemning power of the Law. Who of us has ever come close to loving the one who alone is God with all of our heart, and with all of our soul, and with all of our mind? And yet this isn’t just a warm sentiment, it’s the LAW. Which one of us has ever really even come close to fulfilling this law? On the one hand, how often does our “love” to God consist of anything less than obedience to His commands? How often does our “love” for God remain nothing more than a warm, sentimental feeling? But “love,” apart from obedience, is not love at all. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). On the other hand, how often is our “obedience” to God’s law motivated, and shaped, and informed by anything less than love to God? How often is our obedience tainted by even the slightest little bit of self-interest? But even the taint of self-interest is a horrific thing. Any motive other than an undivided love to God is criminal since God is one, and there is no other. Even now we can so easily begin to sink down under the condemning weight and burden of the Law – until we come to see that even in this great and first commandment in the Law, we have the very essence of the Gospel, and of grace. “Jesus does not command, “You shall love God.” The God with whom Jesus faces his hearers is ‘the Lord your God,’ … Yahweh, the God with an address, the God of Israel… when Jesus commanded love of ‘the Lord your God,’ he commanded love for a God who first loved us. And this (already loving) God… is already ‘your’ God. The one word ‘your’ has the whole gospel in it.” (Bruner) “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” That’s what James calls the perfect law of liberty (James 1:25)! Where once we were sinking under the condemning weight and burden of the Law, now we are freed to pursue obedience to that same Law with gladness and joy! Let us pursue the true love of God in the keeping of all His commandments not only because this love is righteously and justly required of us, but especially because we may. This is the wonder of the Christian life. Because God has first loved us, we are free to love Him by keeping His commandments – and His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 4:19; 5:3). We are free to do so, but of course, the reason we still need this exhortation is because sin still strives for the mastery – offering us other god’s, and competing loves. “You shall love the Lord… your God… with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” But isn’t this the answer that the Pharisees expected Jesus should give? So then where’s the trap?† Well, let’s think for a minute about the various public claims that Jesus has made for Himself. In Matthew chapter nine, He claimed the authority to forgive sins (9:1-7). In chapter twelve, He said that He was “lord of the Sabbath” (12:1-8), and also that HE was “greater than †

For the basic interpretation that follows, I am especially indebted to Lange’s commentary.

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the temple” (12:1-8). In chapter five, He said that He came to fulfill the Law of Moses, and then He would make statements like this: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you” (5:1748). In chapter twenty-one He cleansed the temple as a symbolic fulfillment of what Malachi had said that God would do (21:12-13; cf. Mal. 3:1-4). In four different places (two of them in the immediate context of this passage) Jesus quoted Old Testament passages that spoke about God and applied them directly to Himself (3:1-3; 11:7-10; 21:14-16; 21:42-44). As recently as the Parable of the Tenants in Matthew twenty-one, Jesus very clearly implied that He was the Son of God (21:33-40). We learn from John’s Gospel that the Jews understood any such claim of sonship to be a claim of equality with God (John 10:22-39). So maybe the Pharisees weren’t really so sure about what Jesus’ answer would be. After all, how could Jesus say all the things that He said about Himself, and then still say that the great and first commandment was the command to love only God because He alone is God? But that’s exactly what Jesus did say; and if that was a surprise to the Pharisees, then what He says next will be even more of a surprise. III. Matthew 22:39–40 — “And a second [commandment] is like [the first]: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” The Pharisees asked only for the single greatest commandment in the Law. But now, after identifying the great and first commandment, Jesus goes on to give the Pharisees what they had not asked for, and what they apparently didn’t understand: “And a second is like [the first].” But how is the second “like” the first? The second is like the first in that it is equally as important as the first! “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Jesus concludes in the Gospel of Mark, “There is no other commandment greater than these” (greater than these two together; Mark 12:31). It’s impossible not to hear Jesus elevating the second all the way up to a level with the first! Yes, the first is still first, and the second is still second, but the first can never be rightly understood or obeyed apart from the second, and therefore the second is just as important as the first. But this is exactly what would have most shocked, and perhaps offended, the Pharisees. They were certainly not unaware of the command in Leviticus chapter nineteen to love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). In Luke, when Jesus asked the lawyer for a summary of what the Law required for eternal life, the lawyer responded not only with the Jewish Shema, but also with the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:25-28). Jesus was not the first one to put these two commandments side by side. But Jesus was the first one to ever elevate love for neighbor to the same level with love for God. The Pharisees would never have done this (cf. Hagner; Bruner)! To the contrary, the Pharisees understood that at least sometimes love for God could exempt a person from the requirement to love his neighbor. As just two examples, the Pharisees understood the requirement to keep God’s Sabbaths holy as a forbidding of any healing on the Sabbath (12:9-12); and the Pharisees also taught that if someone had dedicated his money to God, he need not use that money to help his parents in their old age (15:5-6). The Pharisees had long known the importance of the command to love one’s neighbor, but their fatal error was when they made it of secondary importance, as though it could be possible for these two commandments to compete with each other. So Jesus sets the record straight by teaching us that both commandments are of equal importance (love for God, and love for neighbor). Would we have ever dared to say such a thing? And if not, then I wonder if we are still actually confused

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about what it is that God’s Law truly requires. These two commandments are bound up together so tightly that Paul can even go so far as to say this:  Galatians 5:14 (cf. Rom. 13:8-10) — The whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What! Didn’t Paul mean to say, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”? But God is pleased to be loved by us in and through our love for others. The way that we love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind is by loving our neighbor as ourselves – by always doing to him as we would wish him to be doing for us (cf. 1 John 4:20-21; Mat. 25:40, 45; 7:12). And so once again, love for God is moved from simply a warm, sentimental feeling to the practical nitty-gritty of our daily encounters with anyone and everyone who crosses our path. Sometimes I think I’ve missed the helpfulness of the words “as yourself” because I mostly just feel convicted by them. But they can also be a wonderful and very practical help. To love another person as myself, I really need to envision myself in that person (you could almost think of it as an “out of body” experience). When we do this, it’s amazing how our perspective immediately changes. Once that other person is me, there’s really no question of what I must think, or say, or do – everything becomes very, very clear. The way we love God is simple, it’s by loving our neighbor as ourselves. But on the other hand, this kind of self-abandonment is impossible apart from the sustaining motive, and the sustaining joy, of love for God – who first loved us (cf. Carson). The Pharisees thought perhaps that in light of the extravagant claims that Jesus made for Himself, He must be blinded to the great and first commandment in the Law: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your [mind].” But in response, Jesus points out to the Pharisees that their own understanding of the great commandment in the Law was deficient because it was blinding them to their obligation to love their neighbor as themselves. The Pharisees’ concern about the claims of Jesus can’t really be motivated by a genuine commitment to the great commandment in the Law because they’ve perverted that very commandment by making love for neighbor of secondary importance to love for God. Jesus has exposed the Pharisees’ hypocrisy… so then what about the oneness of God? What about the command to have no other gods besides Yahweh, and to love God with all of one’s heart, and soul, and mind? And then what about the claims that Jesus has been making for Himself – the claims by which He seems to be making Himself equal to God? IV. Matthew 22:41–46 — Now while the Pharisees were gathered together [cf. v. 34], Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? If then David calls him Lord, how is he

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his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. Indeed. If the promised Messiah is David’s son, then how is it that King David, in the Spirit, calls his own son, “Lord”? There’s mystery here, but there’s also an amazing irony. Jesus quotes a passage from Psalm 110 to prove that the Messiah is more than a mere man – He is not just David’s son, He’s also David’s Lord. But to be David’s Lord, then the Messiah can only be God. So Jesus quotes Psalm 110 to prove that He Himself must be God in the flesh. But Psalm 110 falls under the category of the “Prophets,” and according to Jesus, all the Law and the Prophets hang on the reality that God is one, and that this one God is therefore to be loved with all of one’s heart, and soul, and mind. So can you see what Jesus is saying? He’s saying that as the Messiah, His claims to be equal with God are actually in perfect harmony with the oneness of God. There’s no rationalistic or logical explanation here – just the mystery of God’s revealed word. According to the great and first commandment in the Law, God is one, and so it is He alone that we must love with all of our heart, and soul, and mind. And yet according to the Prophets which hang on the reality that God is one, the promised Son of David is equal with God – He is the fulfillment of God’s Law, He is greater than the temple, He is Lord of the Sabbath, He is the one who forgives sins, He is “Son of God,” He is David’s Lord. Conclusion In the Pharisees’ “zeal” for the great and first commandment in the Law, they were blinded first of all to their obligation to love their neighbor. Maybe we’ve also been guilty, at least in practice, of separating between the love of God and the love of our neighbor – as though the one could ever be possible without the other. By God’s grace, may all of us truly be striving to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, and soul, and mind… by loving our neighbor as ourselves. And may this very practical, “nitty-gritty” love for our neighbor be sustained and motivated every day by love for God, who loved us first. But then again, in the Pharisees’ “zeal” for the great and first commandment in the Law they were also blinded to their own Messiah. If the Pharisees had had it their way, the great and first commandment in the Law would have prohibited their own Messiah from ever existing. If there’s one thing we learn from the Pharisees, it’s that knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom. We must never let our “expert” knowledge of God’s Word blind us to the presence of mystery in God’s Word. And when these mysteries surpass all our rationalistic and logical explanations may we not stumble in doubt and unbelief, but instead grow stronger and stronger in true and genuine faith. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” And yet may we never forget that David, in the Spirit, called his own son, Lord. To use the words of the Apostle Paul, let us strive for “a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden [as we have seen over, and over, and over again in the book of Matthew] all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2-3; NASB).

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