Sermon - Trinity XVIII 2019 - Matthew 22:34-46

In this crazy messed up world, what’s going to save it? Is it love? Afterall, Christ taught that the greatest commandment is:“You shall love the Lord your God… You shall love your neighbor…” Love! We all love the word love don’t we! Love is the word of our day! “Love wins!” “Love finds a way!” Love, love, love! We love throwing that word around, but we never really bother to define it too carefully. 

Love is used in a variety of contexts. For a young man and woman who’ve been dating, they’re terrified of using the “L Word” too soon in a relationship, even though they’re just fine swapping spit and sharing a bed. Parents love their children, and assure them of their love throughout the day. When you particularly enjoy a certain flavor of ice cream, you make sure to share your love for it with everyone you know. Culturally we talk about loving people just as they are and we say loving them means not asking them to change. We aren’t supposed to be mean, we’re supposed to be loving. 

We use the word love so frequently and in such a variety of ways, we just can’t pin down what this word means. Sometimes it’s a feeling or an emotion, other times it’s a symbol of our undying affection, at times it’s just a more extreme version of like, sometimes it means total acceptance and approval, and sometimes it’s even just the opposite of being rude.

So with all these different versions of the word love floating around, what does it really mean? Thankfully for us, Jesus makes it quite clear: Love is the fulfillment of the law; love is the greatest commandment in the law. Therefore, love is not an emotion or a state of being, but an action, and specifically it’s an action that fulfills God’s holy law. Thus, to answer our initial question: What’s going to save this world? Is it love? No; love won’t save you or this world around you. Love is the law of God, and salvation comes not from the Law but from the Gospel.

The reason it won’t save you is because love, the law, is all something that you do. How good are you really at loving? Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Do you think you’re really so good at loving God that it’s going to save you and this world? Who among us can say that they love God with their whole heart, their whole soul, and their whole mind? 

Let’s unpack what this all means from a Hebrew understanding. By heart, Jesus means the will or the inner self, the center of a person. So Jesus commands us that we must love God with our heart, our will. If we don’t love God with our will, we can’t even call ourselves Christians. But even if you love God with your heart, but not your whole heart, if you’re straddling the fence, if you’re a bit indifferent and not entirely devoted to God, then you don’t love God. 

By soul, Jesus means the seat of your affections, or in other words, your emotions. Jesus commands us that we must love God with our soul, our affections. But if you don’t love God with your whole soul, if you have a lukewarm love towards Him, that’s not enough, and you don’t really love Him, so He will spit you out.

By mind, Jesus means your reason and your intellect. Jesus commands you to love Him with your whole mind, with all of your reason. Even if you love God with your mind, but not your whole mind, then you don’t even know who God is and you certainly don’t know Him as your greatest good in this life. 

The only person who has truly loved God is the one who has made God’s will their own, the one who fully desires God above all other things in this life, the one whose thoughts are continually directed towards God. Who among us can say that they love God with such utter devotion and ardent zeal that they fully and completely embrace God’s will as their own will? If God’s will determined that you must lose everything in this life and suffer the most grievous pains, would you really look at it all as joy? I think you get the picture.

As if it wasn’t already impossible to completely love God with our whole being, the law of love also demands that we love our neighbors. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” How much do you love yourself? Not just a little bit, not coldly or halfheartedly, but fully and completely and constantly! You always gotta look out for number one, right? We love ourselves so much that we would do nearly anything for self-preservation. Even when we do good for others, we’re usually motivated by selfish reasons because we want to feel good about ourselves. 

Therefore, understanding how completely we love ourselves, do we ever love our neighbor even a fraction as much? Do we concern ourselves with our neighbor’s bodily needs at the sacrifice of our own? Do we readily enter into poverty so that our neighbor can live in luxury? Do you dedicate your entire life and being to the betterment, success, and happiness of your neighbor as the expense of your own? Again, you get the picture. 

There are none in this life who can love God and neighbor as perfectly as Jesus commands. No, not even Christians can fulfill the law of love. The ones who claim to have obtained moral perfection and love perfectly and completely, they’re under a delusion. So much for our love winning.

God be praised that we who’re not going to fix this world by our love, will be fixed and saved through the eternal gospel promise of Christ. While the Pharisees asked Jesus a question of the law, Jesus asked them a question of the Gospel, “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 his son?”

The Pharisees thought that the Messiah would be a mere man, a son of David, a man who would reign as an earthly king and set up an earthly kingdom. But Jesus points out that king David called his son, who is the Christ, his Lord even before the Christ was born. Thus, the Messiah cannot be a mere man, but He must also be God’s eternal Son Himself! If therefore the Messiah isn’t a mere mortal, His kingdom must also not be merely an earthly kingdom, but an eternally divine and heavenly kingdom. If God’s kingdom isn’t of this world, then neither is the salvation by which we shall inherit this kingdom.

This means, my friends, that the love you show to your neighbors and to God in this life isn’t enough to save you nor this world around you. Your earthly love isn’t enough. Your love won’t win. Your love won’t find a way to save you. We will never set up a paradise on earth through our love. Only God’s love for you, which is the glorious gospel, shall save you from this world of darkness unto His marvelous light!

Our love for God and our neighbor is the sum and substance of the Law, but Christ’s love for us is the sum and substance of the Gospel! While our eyes may be downcast with shame when asked if we’ve sufficiently loved God and our neighbor, we can still joyfully answer Jesus’ question: “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” He is the Son of God and He is my Lord! He is “begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, and is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.”

Therefore dear Christians, don’t be so in love with the love that you show to others. Rather, look to the Gospel and the love Christ has for you, for in that love you find the Father’s heart, soul, and mind for you which is yours in Christ Jesus. As a result of God’s love for you, it’s then that you receive a new heart which does begin to love God and your neighbor as you ought. In that way you receive the first fruits of paradise now, already we’ve begun to love others as Christ has loved us, and then in paradise your love for others will be perfected and completed.

So in a way I suppose you could say it’s all about love and that we’ll be saved by love, but God’s love; His love wins and finds a way.