Deuteronomy 10:12-21/1 Corinthians 1:1-9/St Matthew 22:34-46
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. It is a bold statement to be sure. Jesus is saying that the entirety of the Old Testament, everything in God’s revelation to man up to that point, literally hangs from these two commandments: love God with your all and love your neighbor as yourself.
Elsewhere St Paul summarized this in one word: love. Agape. Love. This is God’s will for you in any and every situation. Agape. Self-sacrificing love for the other; for your neighbor. Love is always the will of God for you. In everything you do, in everything you say, in everything you think, in everything you are, His will for you is that you love Him with your all and that you love your neighbor as yourself.
And these two commandments are held inseparably together. Now, we are always tempted to delude ourselves about our love for God. We like to think that we love him. We say that we love Him. Yet so often it is a mind game; a self justification. Christ our Lord gives you the concrete way to observe your love for God: He says that it is shown in how you love your neighbor. That is why He said, And the second is like it. These two commandments, the summation of all the Law and Prophets, are tied together as one divine mandate.
The Apostles understood and expressed this in their sermons, the Epistles. Consider St John: If anyone says “I love God” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 Jn 4:20-21).
So the proof of the love you have for God is not found in the mushy feelings of tenderness, the ooey-gooey sighs toward whatever you imagine God to be. No, that’s merely idolatry. That’s self-love. The proof of love for God is precisely in how your treat your neighbor. And of course, Jesus pushes that a little further: I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven (Mt 5:44-45). How do you treat the person who is unkind, cruel, vicious, and hate-filled toward you? How do you react to them? There is the mirror, held right up to your face, reflecting your true self and whether or not you really love God.
Repentance is needed. We are wretched men; poor miserable sinners. For this total love that is God’s will for our lives - this love for God that discloses itself by the way we serve and bless and pray for others, and especially those who are most difficult for us - this is not how we live. It is not who we are. Not one of us in this this room can endure the all - Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all, your soul, with all your mind. Nothing inside but love; agape, self-sacrificial love. That your whole life BE love. This is the good and gracious will of God. And it s not how your live. Its not how I live.
And the result is that we do untold damage to ourselves. We poison our lives with the bitterness and hatred and anger and malice of Satan. And even though we are His baptized children, people in whom God has begun His good work and sewn a heart that love, we still see that this love in us is so weak, so fragmentary, so fragile. We know what God expects of us - total, agape, love - but there’s not a person in this room who comes close.
Well, that not exactly true. In fact, its not true at all. There is one Person here for whom it was and is so. We stood and sang to Him as He spoke to us in His Word. Soon we will greet Him as He comes to us in His Body and Blood. I speak of Him in whose Name we are gathered: Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Lord.
For if all the Law and the Prophets hang on this, Love the Lord your God with your all and love your neighbor as yourself, then on these two greatest commandments does Jesus hang. In Him the two commandments meet. It is the true, lex semper accusat. The Law always accuses. The commandments show us our wretchedness, our sin, how terribly far we are from loving God with our all. But the commandments also show you what and who Jesus, the Christ, is.
This is why He asked, What about the Christ? Whose son is He? And when they rightly answers, David’s! He always gives them the mystery to ponder: 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”? How can David’s son, his heir, his descendant from his own body, be at the same time David’s Master and Lord?
You know the answer. Because David’s Son is at one and the same time the Eternal Son of the Father. He is God the Word in our flesh, woven in the Woman’s womb, made our brother, our neighbor.
He is the fullness of the Law and the Prophets, the unity of the two commandments. He is Man yet at He is very God of very God. Both at the same time. He came among us to love us. Indeed He is the love of God made manifest. He is Love Incarnate! Again St John’s epistle: In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the all-atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 Jn 4:9-11).
The God whom you are to love with your all shows up as among us as your neighbor. But He comes not be be served, but to serve. Not to demand love, but to love you. And He loves you as He loves Himself. He loves you all the way to the nails run through His hands and feet and the spear piercing His side. His blood pouring out to give you life and love. He loves you all the way through the abandonment and the loneliness. He loves you all the way to sharing your tomb and sanctifying your grave. He loves you all the way to the stone flung aside and the grave robbed of its prey. He loves you with a total love, an agape, self-sacrificing love for the other, that has no fractions or fragments. And that’s how He as true Man rendered to the Father total love, complete love, the fulfillment of all the Law and the Prophets, hung upon Him.
But death cannot hold a love like that. That kind of love is stronger than death. He joins you to that death-defying love in Holy Baptism, as He joins you to Himself in love. And He feeds that love to you now in His Body and Blood, giving and promising you a love that will be yours forever. In fact, this is His guarantee - the pledge of His love, His Body and Blood back from the grave into your bodies. “Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be” (LSB 430:1). By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment (1 Jn 4:17).
And St John goes on: As He is so also are we in this world (1 Jn 4:17); that is, what you shall be is not yet fully realized, but what you are is already your own. For Christ feeds His Body and Blood to you in love saying, “Child, you have been loved totally, completely, without measure or limit. I have made you My own in Baptism. I feed you with the Bread of Life. Let that love live now in you; shape you, mold you - the love that loves the neighbor and the enemy.”
For while we were yet enemies, Christ loved us and has made us children. Abide in Him and He in you, for He is love. You have been born of Him, in and of His love. And His love in you casts out all fear. In Christ the Law no longer accuses you, for it has been fulfilled. In Christ His Law, His good and gracious will for your life, give you in loving service to your neighbor.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. It is a bold statement to be sure. Jesus is saying that the entirety of the Old Testament, everything in God’s revelation to man up to that point, literally hangs from these two commandments: love God with your all and love your neighbor as yourself.
Elsewhere St Paul summarized this in one word: love. Agape. Love. This is God’s will for you in any and every situation. Agape. Self-sacrificing love for the other; for your neighbor. Love is always the will of God for you. In everything you do, in everything you say, in everything you think, in everything you are, His will for you is that you love Him with your all and that you love your neighbor as yourself.
And these two commandments are held inseparably together. Now, we are always tempted to delude ourselves about our love for God. We like to think that we love him. We say that we love Him. Yet so often it is a mind game; a self justification. Christ our Lord gives you the concrete way to observe your love for God: He says that it is shown in how you love your neighbor. That is why He said, And the second is like it. These two commandments, the summation of all the Law and Prophets, are tied together as one divine mandate.
The Apostles understood and expressed this in their sermons, the Epistles. Consider St John: If anyone says “I love God” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 Jn 4:20-21).
So the proof of the love you have for God is not found in the mushy feelings of tenderness, the ooey-gooey sighs toward whatever you imagine God to be. No, that’s merely idolatry. That’s self-love. The proof of love for God is precisely in how your treat your neighbor. And of course, Jesus pushes that a little further: I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven (Mt 5:44-45). How do you treat the person who is unkind, cruel, vicious, and hate-filled toward you? How do you react to them? There is the mirror, held right up to your face, reflecting your true self and whether or not you really love God.
Repentance is needed. We are wretched men; poor miserable sinners. For this total love that is God’s will for our lives - this love for God that discloses itself by the way we serve and bless and pray for others, and especially those who are most difficult for us - this is not how we live. It is not who we are. Not one of us in this this room can endure the all - Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all, your soul, with all your mind. Nothing inside but love; agape, self-sacrificial love. That your whole life BE love. This is the good and gracious will of God. And it s not how your live. Its not how I live.
And the result is that we do untold damage to ourselves. We poison our lives with the bitterness and hatred and anger and malice of Satan. And even though we are His baptized children, people in whom God has begun His good work and sewn a heart that love, we still see that this love in us is so weak, so fragmentary, so fragile. We know what God expects of us - total, agape, love - but there’s not a person in this room who comes close.
Well, that not exactly true. In fact, its not true at all. There is one Person here for whom it was and is so. We stood and sang to Him as He spoke to us in His Word. Soon we will greet Him as He comes to us in His Body and Blood. I speak of Him in whose Name we are gathered: Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Lord.
For if all the Law and the Prophets hang on this, Love the Lord your God with your all and love your neighbor as yourself, then on these two greatest commandments does Jesus hang. In Him the two commandments meet. It is the true, lex semper accusat. The Law always accuses. The commandments show us our wretchedness, our sin, how terribly far we are from loving God with our all. But the commandments also show you what and who Jesus, the Christ, is.
This is why He asked, What about the Christ? Whose son is He? And when they rightly answers, David’s! He always gives them the mystery to ponder: 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”? How can David’s son, his heir, his descendant from his own body, be at the same time David’s Master and Lord?
You know the answer. Because David’s Son is at one and the same time the Eternal Son of the Father. He is God the Word in our flesh, woven in the Woman’s womb, made our brother, our neighbor.
He is the fullness of the Law and the Prophets, the unity of the two commandments. He is Man yet at He is very God of very God. Both at the same time. He came among us to love us. Indeed He is the love of God made manifest. He is Love Incarnate! Again St John’s epistle: In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the all-atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 Jn 4:9-11).
The God whom you are to love with your all shows up as among us as your neighbor. But He comes not be be served, but to serve. Not to demand love, but to love you. And He loves you as He loves Himself. He loves you all the way to the nails run through His hands and feet and the spear piercing His side. His blood pouring out to give you life and love. He loves you all the way through the abandonment and the loneliness. He loves you all the way to sharing your tomb and sanctifying your grave. He loves you all the way to the stone flung aside and the grave robbed of its prey. He loves you with a total love, an agape, self-sacrificing love for the other, that has no fractions or fragments. And that’s how He as true Man rendered to the Father total love, complete love, the fulfillment of all the Law and the Prophets, hung upon Him.
But death cannot hold a love like that. That kind of love is stronger than death. He joins you to that death-defying love in Holy Baptism, as He joins you to Himself in love. And He feeds that love to you now in His Body and Blood, giving and promising you a love that will be yours forever. In fact, this is His guarantee - the pledge of His love, His Body and Blood back from the grave into your bodies. “Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be” (LSB 430:1). By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment (1 Jn 4:17).
And St John goes on: As He is so also are we in this world (1 Jn 4:17); that is, what you shall be is not yet fully realized, but what you are is already your own. For Christ feeds His Body and Blood to you in love saying, “Child, you have been loved totally, completely, without measure or limit. I have made you My own in Baptism. I feed you with the Bread of Life. Let that love live now in you; shape you, mold you - the love that loves the neighbor and the enemy.”
For while we were yet enemies, Christ loved us and has made us children. Abide in Him and He in you, for He is love. You have been born of Him, in and of His love. And His love in you casts out all fear. In Christ the Law no longer accuses you, for it has been fulfilled. In Christ His Law, His good and gracious will for your life, give you in loving service to your neighbor.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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