Matthew 22:34-40

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Introduction

The Great Commandment

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 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. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

This week we reach the final challenge made against Jesus by Israel’s religious leaders before he’s delivered up to be killed, particularly the Pharisees, who seem to be behind most, if not all, of the attacks against him. They’ve attacked him alongside the Sadducees, and have even plotted with the Herodians in order to entangle him in his words. They’re trying to find some kind of charge to make against him. They want him to say something that’ll get himself into trouble.
They’re particularly frustrated at this point because they’ve been unsuccessful for years now, Jesus’ following has probably grown beyond anything they’ve ever had, Jesus speaks with authority and can do what they cannot, he performs signs and wonders wherever he goes, that give testimony to his identity as the Messiah (that he’s from God), and on top of that they can’t even win an argument with him. In fact, at nearly every point his answers result in making them look foolish in front of the crowds. And nothing makes a prideful man more angry than being publicly humiliated. Moreover, they lack much of the the power to do anything about it. They can’t simply grab him and put him to death, if they intend to kill him they have to convince Rome to do it, because they have no power to carry out capital punishment on their own.
Now, it’s probably Wednesday of the Passover week, just a couple of days before they’ll finally make their move to take Jesus out. So, again, as I’ve mentioned before, we’re in the final throws of Jesus’ climactic confrontation with Israel’s religious leaders. After this, Jesus will challenge them one final time, and condemn them in chapter 23 in his famous seven woes against the Scribes and Pharisees.

Psalm 2 fulfilled

In fact, what we’re witnessing is the fulfillment of Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is a Messianic psalm, that many of us are probably familiar with, that looks back at the promises given to King David and looks forward to Israel’s Messiah, the King of Israel, who will reign forever, God’s Anointed One. In the first three verses we read,

The Reign of the LORD’s Anointed

2 Why do the nations rage

and the peoples plot in vain?

2  The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers take counsel together,

against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,

3  “Let us burst their bonds apart

and cast away their cords from us.”

The early church recognized this shortly after Jesus’ death and resurrection in Acts chapter 4. Peter and John had been speaking to the people in Jerusalem, proclaiming Jesus and his resurrection from the dead, when the priests, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees come down upon them. They take them into custody and demand that they to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, but Peter and John respond that they cannot. And since they couldn’t find a way to punish them they let them go. And when Peter and John return to the other disciples they reported what the chief priests and elders had said to them, then we’re told that when the disciples heard it,

they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, 25 who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

“ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage,

and the peoples plot in vain?

26  The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers were gathered together,

against the Lord and against his Anointed’—

27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

Israel’s rulers are gathering together, they’re plotting in vain, and are setting themselves up against the Lord’s Anointed.

Parallel account

This particular account here in verses 34-40 does have a parallel account recorded in Mark 12:28-34. The account there is largely the same, but Mark does add some additional details to the story. He includes more of what Jesus says in his response to the lawyer, and also includes the lawyer’s response to Jesus, which Matthew omits here in chapter 22 of his Gospel. But we’ll look more closely at those things later on.

What is the greatest commandment?

For now, let’s read again, there, starting in verse 34,

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

Now, the lawyer’s question probably doesn’t land on us in quite the same way that it would have landed in Jesus’ day. And that’s probably because 1) we already know the answer, and 2) because we know the answer, we assume they did too, so to a Christian the question naturally seems somewhat insignificant? So we tempted to ask ourselves, “How does this question put Jesus to the test?”
Well, the first thing we have to understand is that for the Jews no one had ever answered that question finally, and authoritatively, in other words, there’s no OT text that tells us explicitly which law, or commandment, is the greatest, or the most important. Which meant there were endless theological debates that attempted to answer that question. Now, it isn’t that Jesus’ answer is necessarily novel per se’ but it’s undoubtedly one among many.

Categorizing and summarizing 613 commands

The Jews had concluded that there were 613 commandments outlined in the Pentateuch (or the Books of Moses), and we know that they had categorized many of those commandments, distinguishing between lighter or weightier commands of the Law. In fact, in chapter 23, when Jesus is bringing down the hammer against the scribes and Pharisees, he says in verses 23-24,

23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

So even Jesus agrees that some commands are weightier than others, not that we have an excuse to not obey, or to neglect, the other lighter matters of the law, but simply that some laws are more important than others, or take precedence. Therefore, the Jews had attempted to prioritize and summarize these 613 commandments, an attempt to boil them down to their essence.
NT Scholar, D.A. Carson writes,
“the rabbis of Jesus’ day were much exercised to find summary statements of OT laws and establish their relative importance;” (Carson, D. A. (1984). Matthew. Vol. 8, p. 463)

Attempt to get rid of Jesus

So they likely put this question to Jesus to attempt to get Jesus to alienate himself from certain party factions by forcing him to choose between one of the 613 commandments in the Pentateuch. They figured that no matter how he answered, that he would find disagreement with someone, that no matter how he answered that he would alienate himself from someone. This all goes back to their efforts to embroil Jesus in a controversy that they could leverage to get rid of him.

The Shema

Now, let’s look at Jesus’ answer starting there in verse 37,

37 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. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

At this point, we find that Mark records more than Matthew, we read starting in Mark 12:29,

29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

What we notice, is that Jesus is quoting, likely, the most well known OT passage, Deuteronomy 6:4-5. It’s the beginning of what the Jews call the Shema, which is literally a command to ‘hear’. It’s what you might call their confession of faith, and it’s their habit, even today, to repeat it at certain times of the day. It was likely recited during Temple worship, and possibly during worship in their synagogues. Their children would have been taught the Shema at very young age, and many Jews even wrote it on scrolls small enough to fit inside of a small leather box on their foreheads. They take literally the command in verse 8 to bind these teachings as frontlets between their eyes.
So Jesus takes part of this passage from Deuteronomy and pair it with Leviticus 19:18, that,

you shall love your neighbor as yourself

Now, what Jesus does here is more than to merely pick between competing laws, or among the 613 commandments. Which is wise, because that’s exactly the trap they want him to fall into. He ultimately surprises the lawyer and he confounds the Pharisees by giving priority to a certain principle, and he elevates that principle using these two scriptures.

The principle of love

That principle is love, and in the first and greatest commandment, to love God preeminently. Then the second, which is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. So, Jesus boils the entire Law and the Prophets, the entire OT Law down to a single principle, love. Which plays out in two fundamental ways, first, to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and second, to love your neighbor as yourself.

The first and second table (decalogue)

Jesus is saying that this principle in these two ways sums up the Law and the Prophets. And for centuries theologians have noticed that these two overarching commands can be found summarized in the 10 commandments, or what’s often called the decalogue (deca meaning 10). And they make a further distinction within the decalogue, between the first table and the second table. With the first four commandments relating directly to our relationship to God (having no other gods, making no images of God, honoring God’s name, and keeping the Sabbath), while the last six are related to our relationship with one another (honoring parents, the prohibition of murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness). So we can see Jesus’ answer illustrated by the 10 commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor.

How we love God

These commandments illustrate for us how we love God, and how we love our neighbor. And while we don’t have the time to look at most of them let’s look at at least one together. Turn with me to Exodus 20, starting in verse 1,

20 And God spoke all these words, saying,

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

Now, remember how the Shema begins, because it sets a foundation for this first commandment,

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

What the Scriptures make abundantly clear is that there is only one God, not many gods. This is essential to Christianity, and it’s what distinguishes it from almost every other religion. The Apostle Paul would later write to the church in Corinth that,

as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” 5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

So since there is only one God, Yahweh, it would therefore be an offense to worship another god, or to bring another god before his face. It would be idolatry. Like the institution of marriage, our relationship to God is one that demands that we forsake all others. To have another god besides him, or to bring another god before him would be like a shameless woman bringing an adulterer before her husband’s very eyes. (John Calvin) Therefore, the first commandment mandates a certain kind of relationship with God, a relationship that demands all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our mind, no merely some of it. God demands all of our worship.

Syncretism

In the OT the most prevalent sin of Israel was syncretism. The Jews rarely forsook God altogether, they always seemed to keep some semblance of him in their thinking and in their religious practices, but they were perfectly content in worshiping other idols at the same time. They would add other deities and religious practices to their worship, spurning God’s name in the process, and playing the whore.

Idolatry

Sometimes texts like these can seem irrelevant or disconnected from our modern live, but I assure you there is nothing new under the sun. Just because we don’t typically fashion idols out of wood and stone, doesn’t mean we aren’t prone to make god in our own image using our minds. We might call him Yahweh, but he’s nothing like him. This is the danger with much of the false teaching today, that it often flies under the banner of Jesus’ name, but looks nothing like the God of the Bible.
I’m also reminded of 1 John 2:15,

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

We have to be watchful of loving other things, even good things. Preacher and theologian, John Calvin, once wrote,
“The human heart is a factory of idols. Every one of us is, from his mother's womb, an expert in inventing idols.”
Our hearts are prone to wander, and idolatry is the essence of breaking the first commandment. A picture of our hearts forsaking God for another. Whereas Jesus teaches us that God requires our whole heart.

Heart, soul & mind

Now, some have tried to break up this list of ‘heart’, ‘soul’, and ‘mind’ to argue that there are three distinct parts of man being taught here, but I don’t think that’s what Jesus is doing. These three words are very similar and their definitions overlap considerably, which I think is intended to emphasis the completeness of love that we must have for God. Together, they emphasis the totality of the person, every faculty and capacity. (D.A. Carson, Matthew)
This also suggests that our chief affection should be for God himself. As the famous hymn, Turn You Eyes Upon Jesus, says,
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.
The effect of the Gospel is intended to soften the heart, it’s intended to change the the heart, from a heart that hated God, or was indifferent toward God, to a heart that is loves him above all else. That trusts him and delights in him.

Loving our neighbor

And it’s precisely this love that enables us and drives us to obey the the second greatest commandment. We love our neighbor because we love God. Our love for our neighbor is ultimately borne out of our love for God, an overflow and necessary result. In fact, one cannot love God and fail to love our neighbor. Listen to 1 John 4:20,

20 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. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

In fact, the Bible goes so far to say that biblical love toward your neighbor is fundamentally impossible apart from our love for and from God. In 1 John 4:19 (just one verse earlier) we read,

19 We love because he first loved us.

Disciplined altruism

It’s important to realize that disciplined altruism is not biblical love, because the very fountainhead of love is God himself. This is why John also says, in chapter 4, verse 8, that, “God is love.” To “let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” This is why disciplined altruism is not pleasing to God.
This is why the Apostle Paul also says in Romans 14:23 that,

whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

In other words, faith is what unites us to God, it’s the instrument by which the Holy Spirit pours the love of God into us, therefore without it we’re disconnected from the fountainhead of love, God himself, for God is love.

Love your neighbor as yourself

And finally, Jesus also says that we must love our neighbor as ourselves. And while some modern commentators have attempted to turn this text into an argument teaching that we must love ourselves in order to love our neighbors, the point here is rather to underscore the degree to which we are to love our neighbor. Our natural propensity and inclination to love ourselves is so great that we should measure our love for others by it. It carries with it the same idea as the Golden Rule, that,

The Golden Rule

12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

And we can see this love reflected in the second table of the law can’t we? To honor our parents, to not commit murder, adultery, theft, bear false witness, or covet our neighbor’s things. In Jesus’ sermon on the mount he fleshes out the heart of this second table of the law, that at the heart of ‘do no murder’, is also an attitude that that doesn’t slander his brother, that at the heart of ‘do not commit adultery’ is a heart that is faithful even in its thoughts.

Conclusion

The two commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor deeply are connected, and it’s God’s love that connects them. And we’ve only scratched the surface but the implications of Jesus’ answer to this lawyer are profound. Jesus is able to accommodate the entire law, to summarize the entire law under these two commandments. Which is why we read in Mark’s parallel account that,

the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Prayer

Lord, I pray that you would help us to see the importance of these commands. The absolute necessity to love you with our whole heart. Guard us against going after other things, guard our hearts from becoming factory of idols. May your Holy Spirit make it clear to us the things that we have made idols, guard us from our propensity to love the world and the things in it. Stir up our affections for you, my prayer is that our understanding of you would be shaped by your Word and nothing else. Deepen and strengthen our love for you that we might also love our neighbor as ourselves. That not only would we compelled to love our neighbor in deed but in word. Give us boldness to share the Gospel with our neighbor, may we not shrink back.
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