New City Catechism VII
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I wonder…what comes to your mind when I ask the question - what does the law of God require?
Mission impossible?
Try, try and try again until you get over the impossibly high bar?
Over the next few weeks we are going to be looking at the ten commandments in more detail.
We’re goint to look at the question of whether anyone can keep the law of God perfectly and then the remedy that God provides in the light of the answer to that question.
But for now, let’s take a look at what God require’s from the perspective of our Lord Jesus.
Of course, human tendancy when given options is to seek the course of least resistence.
For example...
This is my kind of high jump at the moment...
I think it is fair to say that today we tend to lower the bar of God’s requirements to the level of people’s experience.
In our reading today, Jesus finds himself confronted with a series of testing questions.
Nothing has changed really - there are two ways to approach teh asking a question - the first sincerely seeking to hear what someone has to say.
The second - let the hearer use discernment…to trip someone up or to try and find a back door approach to getting their own way or expressing their own far superior thinking...
This isn’t the first or last time someone tries to trip Jesus up - bless them… they have been using topics around paying tax, marriage and re-marriage, now they are on to the topic of obeying the law.
The gospel writer wants us to see that they have no desire to actually hear what Jesus has to say on the matter - their hearts are in very bad shape.
A bit of background, you may or may not find helpful...
There are 613 commandments found in the law of Moses. By the time of Jesus there have been quite a lot of subsidiary laws added by religious leaders.
Of course, since Genesis 1:28-29 - God has been the one setting the bar
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
Now, Jesus is asked
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
The rabbis may have divided the law into light and weighty categories - but the principle still remained - All the commandments of God were meant to be treated with full seriousness.
So whichever law Jesus held up as the greatest, would have the effect of making every other lower in importance.
How would he reply?
It probably isn’t too much of a stretch to say thhose gathered were expecting Jesus to pick one of the ten commandments.
Notice - he does not.
He chooses Deuteronomy 6:5
5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
which every pious Jew would be familiar with as it formed part of the Shema prayer prayed every day in a tradition that continues unbroken among practising jews today.
Don’t get too hung up on heart, soul and strength, Jesus instead of strength or might uses mind. I think that is interesting and to some degree worthy of reflection - but ultimately what the prayer and what Jesus seeks to highlight here is the need for wholehearted love for God, a love that involves all that we have and all that we are. What God calls for is fundamental loyalty, not just superficial allegiance.
Notice too that although he was only asked for one greatest commandment, Jesus gives a second - this time from Leviticus 19:18
18 “ ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.
and
34 The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
I wonder if you have detected the powerful and disturbing reality in the answer Jesus gives?
40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Jesus is asked for one, he replies with two and then adds in verse 40 that rather than dispensing with all the rest, the rest depend on these two.
The word here -
‘hang’ is a technical term for laws which are derivable from others.
Effectively, what Jesus is saying to those gathered then and now, is this...
The law of God remains the commandments of God, but they find their coherence in the over-riding principle of the double commandment to love.
Just a quick word or two to clarify that.
Jesus is NOT here recommending what has come to be known as
SITUATIONALISM
SITUATIONALISM
He is not saying that there are no principles for Christian conduct other than to do the most loving thing in the given situation.
So some today will say from an ethical perspective - when faced with a dilema - you need to work out what is the most loving thing to do which over-rides everything else.
No - Jesus wants us to see that to understand and apply the commandments of God, we need to do so within the context of our obligation to love God AND our fellow human beings (not just the people who live next door to me).
In other words, the commandments are simply expressions of those two obligations.
Does that make sense?
We don’t start with a command and try to uphold it.
We start with our obligation to love God with all we are and all we have and our neighbour - and then see the commandments of opportunities to express that obligation.
You see, Jesus could see through this man - an expert in the law - strong on ethics.
Weak on relationships.
What makes the teaching here of Jesus so powerful and disturbing is that his relational teaching, if taken seriously, provides a mirror to our hearts.
The answer to our question:
What does the law of God require?
What does the law of God require?
If we take this passage from Matthew and what the bible has to say in its entirety on the subject the answer is:
Personal, perfect and perpetual obedience; that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; and love our neighbour as ourselves. What God forbids should never be done and what God commands should always be done.
It’s Personal
It’s Personal
In that no one else is responsible or accountable for whether we do what God commands...
It’s Perfect
It’s Perfect
Because God doesn’t give us shades of grey - we are called to do exactly what God says completely...
It’s Perpetual
It’s Perpetual
Because we are called to do what God commands completely, consistently and continually...
In seven short verses in Matthew 22 Jesus presents us with a definition of what true religion is.
When there is authentic genuine and all consuming love for God, there will be authentic love for our neighbour.
And the criterion of whether love for God is real is whether or not it is reflected in our relationships with others.
Jesus upholds the importance of God’s law - but he transforms them from orders to be obeyed in our own strength, to an invitation and promise of a new way of life in which, biut by bit, hatred and pride are left behind and the love demonstrated by God towards us, is reflected back in the way we love God and those he places around us.
Well, I can already hear the murmurings.
It may not be expressed in words, but perhaps inwardly we are still feeling it...
The disciples of Jesus felt it when Jesus spoke about camels entering through the eye of a needle, do you?
25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”
I’m afraid you are going to have to wait for that - for now, let’s not lower the bar so that we stop reflecting on it.
I’m sure we would all prefer to see the bar like this:
I expect for some of us we want that so we can be let off the hook.
Or maybe you are one of those people who love a good command or rule that you can bash others with - maybe you have a tendancy to set extremely high expectations that others can’t keep, whilst all the while finding it difficult to uphold the very call of Jesus in our reading today?
Wherever we may be personally - we atre urged to take away with us the reality that Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law.
So for teh legalists among us you can put a lovely red tick next to that.
No, Jesus didn’t come to abolish - he came to fulfil - and to ramp it up a bit. He takes cold hard rules and gives them a relational edge with the love of and love for God right at the centre.
Because actually when you think of it - God in His Holiness and Purity still sets the bar here…
Because God is Holy and Pure, Righteous and Just.
And Jesus calls us
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
But ultimately, the holiness, purity and the perfection that the law sets before us is meant to invite the question - “Who then can be saved?” so that God Himself can provide the answer.
Make sure you hang in there with over the next few weeks - because there is of course a glorious and life giving answer.