9.30 am, Sunday 7 June 1998

Matthew 22:34-40

Writing in Christianity Today some years ago, counsellor David
Seamands summed up his career this way:

Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major
causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are
these: the failure to understand, receive and live out God’s
unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that
unconditional love, forgiveness and grace to other people . . . We read,
we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that’s not the way we
live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level
of our emotions (quoted in Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997)).

The world in which Jesus lived suffered from a similar problem.
Many of his compatriots possessed an excellent knowledge of the
Scriptures and held a good theology (if we can speak of a unitary Old
Testament theology!). Yet the way they lived did not consistently honour
God; nor did their preoccupations help fulfil the mission for which God
had chosen Israel. And when it came to identifying and accepting
Israel’s Messiah, most of the nation’s religious leaders and respected
citizens turned their backs on him.

In Matthew 22:15-46, the author narrates a series of attempts by the
religious establishment to trap Jesus into making statements that would
incriminate him with the Roman authorities or discredit him before his
followers. In verses 23-33, Jesus succeeds in "muzzling" the
Sadducees by his astute knowledge of the Bible and theology; and in
verses 34-40, an expert lawyer from the Pharisee party tries to test him
again:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
Jesus replied, "  ŽLove the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and
greatest commandment. And the second is like it:  ŽLove your neighbour
as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments."

It was a trick question, but Jesus’ answer was pure genius. First,
instead of quoting one of the Ten Commandments, as his audience might
have expected, he quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5 – very familiar words that
framed a Jewish prayer, the Shema, which pious Jews recited twice daily.

Then Jesus added a second commandment as a corollary, this time
taken from Leviticus 19:18, indicating that genuine love for God
involves seeing people as God sees them, and viewing all people, without
exception, as objects of his unconditional love.

In Leviticus 19:18, the "neighbour" is defined as
"one of your own people"; that is, a member of the covenant
community of Israel. When Jesus reiterated this fundamental principle
of the Law, as he did on several occasions, he widened its scope to
include all people, even one’s enemies.

You and I may speak a different language and dress in a different
style to the people who surrounded Jesus that day, but spiritually and
essentially we are no different. Like them, we find it difficult to
love God absolutely and unconditionally.

Why? Because God is Spirit and we are flesh; because our noble
aspirations after God are distracted by a sinful nature that remains
locked in conflict with the priorities of reconciled humanity and the
life of the Spirit; and because we don’t fully appreciate God’s love for
us.

Similarly, we find it difficult to love others unconditionally,
especially those who are obviously different from us. Why? Because,
among other factors, we cherish our individuality and self-sufficiency;
we naturally forge relationships with those who share common ethnicity,
or class, or age, or faith; and we don’t often appreciate our solidarity
or brotherhood with all of humanity.

If, as Jesus suggests, these two commandments epitomise the message
of the Old Testament and are normative for Christian experience, we
ought to obey them – not out of a sense of duty but out of desire to
please God.

To fully love God we need, first, to appreciate and experience God’s
love in our lives; and, second, we need to demonstrate or convey his
love to others – even strangers and enemies.

In Ephesians 3:18, Paul encourages his readers to consider "how
wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ" (Ephesians
3:18b). Of course, to fully appreciate the vastness of the love of God
in Christ is beyond human capacity. As Samuel Trevor Francis put it in
his majestic hymn,

O the deep, deep love of Jesus! ‘Twould take ages to explore But a
drop of all this ocean, or a grain from off its shore.

Yet in the Gospels we have glimpses of the love and compassion Jesus
expressed during his life, and in the cross we see God’s love most fully
expressed.

On the night of his betrayal by one of the Twelve, John records that
"Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and
go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now
showed them the full extent of his love" (John 13:1).

Jesus was the supreme expression of God’s love and grace to
humanity. Now, as he anticipates the cross and all that it involves, his
commitment to his followers is unwavering and undiminished. His actions
reflected the Lord’s words in Isaiah 49:15: "Can a mother forget
the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has
borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you."

He has not forgotten you: "God demonstrates his own love for us
in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans
5:8). We respond in faith and worship, loving the Lord our God with all
our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind."

Our worship includes service to God: loving friend and enemy alike,
meeting people’s needs and healing their hurts in Jesus’ name,
enlightened by the love of God for us, and encouraged by the example of
Christ to us, and empowered by the Spirit of Christ within us.

Such service God accepts and blesses: "if anyone obeys his
word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we
are in him: whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus
walked" (1 John 2:5-6).

The command to love others is fundamental to our identification as a
disciple of Jesus. The sign that you followed Abraham was circumcision.
The sign that you followed Moses was keeping the Sabbath. The sign that
you followed John the Baptist was baptism. The sign that you follow
Jesus is that you love others.

Love is an action, not merely an attitude or aspiration. As C.S.
Lewis once said, "Do not waste time bothering whether you  Žlove’
your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of
the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you
will presently come to love him."

We are free to express or withhold love as we wish. But as Martin
Luther profoundly articulated, the Christian is both "lord of all,
subject to none," and "servant of all, subject to all."

To open my heart to God will free my spirit to worship God, but I
need also to open my heart to my neighbour. It’s a free choice, but it
is God’s will. To keep the first half of the Great Commandment without
keeping the second part is intrinsically impossible.

"If anyone says,  ŽI love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a
liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen,
cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this
command: whoever loves God must also love his brother" (1 John
4:20-21).

God requires heart religion as well as head religion. He desires
his love to us to be conveyed through us to our neighbours. The essence
of Christianity is expressed in that short statement of Jesus: love God,
and love your neighbour.

Jason Tuskes was a 17-year-old high school honour student who loved
scuba diving. One Tuesday morning he left home to explore an underwater
cave near his home in west central Florida, but he never made it home.
In the cave he became lost, and then, in a panic, he got wedged into a
narrow passageway.

When he realised he was trapped, he discarded his yellow metal air
tank and unsheathed his diver’s knife. With the tank as a tablet and
the knife as a pen, he wrote one last message to his family: "I
love you Mom, Dad, and Christian." Then he ran out of air and
drowned.

God’s final words are etched to us on a Roman cross. They are words
written in blood, screaming to be heard across the centuries. They too
say, "I love you."

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me, Underneath me, all
around me, is the current of thy love; Leading onward, leading homeward
to my glorious rest above.

Have you truly experienced that deep love of Jesus? Then ask God to
reveal his love to you! Do you really appreciate what God has done for
you in Christ? Then breathe a prayer of gratitude and worship to him
now. And ask him to help you love him more fully, and serve him more
effectively, from this moment until you arrive at your "glorious
rest above"!

Copyright © 1998 Rod Benson. All rights reserved. Sermon 164
presented at Blakehurst Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 7
June 1998. Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from The
Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1980).

Recommended reading: J.I. Packer, Knowing God (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1973). Gordon MacDonald, Forging a Real World Faith
(Guilford, Surrey: Highland Books, 1989).