The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity – October 16, 2022

Psalm 122; Deuteronomy 10:12-21; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

St. Matthew 22:34-46

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our Lord’s encounter with the Pharisees can be seen as a summary of the Scriptures and an outline of your salvation recorded in three parts: The Law, The Gospel, and the application thereof.

First, we have the Law. The Pharisees approach Jesus to test Him. It is not clear if they are trying to boast that they are able to do what the Sadducees could not do, that is, trick Jesus into accusing Himself; or if they see Jesus as the enemy of their enemy and thus a friend at least for a time. The exact motivation of the Pharisees isn’t important. What we do know is that they are up to no good. It is the week of the crucifixion and they have been plotting the death of Jesus for some time. They are not now looking to make amends with Jesus.

A representative comes forward and asks Jesus which commandment is greatest. This is not a stupid question. It is important. But we must also understand the question. He is not asking which commandment is so important that it renders the other commandments unimportant. He is asking which commandment is the standard by which all commandments are measured.

Scripture tells us that all sin is worthy of death. All sin is a transgression of the will of God and thus deserving of the same eternal punishment. However, God shows particular disdain for certain sins, chiefly murder, adultery, and idolatry. If we insist that all sins are equal in every way, it will lead us to hell. It leads to hell because it says that having a lustful thought is the same as physically sleeping with someone other than your wife. It leads to hell because it says a harsh word about the guy who cut you off in traffic is the same as cutting his throat. It leads to hell because whether you choose to spank your child or beat him doesn’t matter.

Our Lord offers the proper response. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind…and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is the summary of the Law. Love God and love your neighbor. Love is an action. It is a verb. It is something you do. It is not an emotion. How then are we to show our love for God? What actions are we to take to show love for God? By loving our neighbor. You love God by loving your neighbor. Your actions toward your neighbor demonstrate the love you have toward God because your relationship to God necessarily changes who you are and how you treat others.

The problem is that we don’t keep these laws. We do not keep the commandments to love God and love neighbor. You do not treat your neighbor as yourself. The fact that you have money in a bank account says that you do not love your neighbor as yourself. It means that you are storing some money for yourself that you have not given to someone that is in need. If you were in their shoes, you would use the money you currently have stored. Thus, you are not treating them as yourself. You are treating them as a neighbor.

This is not an admonition to empty your bank account. Rather, it is an illustration to show that we always consider our own comfort before we consider the needs of our neighbor. Not only this, we do not love God with our entire being. We chafe at His Law. We chafe at His love. How is it that God can forgive someone like Jeffrey Dahmer when I am trying to be a good person? How is it that God can expect me to forgive when even He condemns the unrepentant? How is it that God expects me to actually separate myself from the culture when He has placed me here? I need a job, so I can go along to get along.

The Law of God is good and wise. It tells us what God desires for us. It tells us how to live according to the will of God so that we might begin to please our heavenly Father. Yet even as much as the Law instructs the Christian, it will always accuse your conscience. You cannot and will not ever keep the Law perfectly. You are incapable of perfect love—perfect love toward God or neighbor. It is for this reason the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees must continue.

Our Lord asks the Pharisees concerning the Christ and whose Son He is. They answer this first question rightly. “He is the Son of David.” Then Jesus intensifies the question. “How then, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, does David call the Christ his Lord? No father, let alone a king, would call his son, ‘Lord’. That is absurd.”

Jesus is teaching the Pharisees concerning His own divinity. He is confessing that the Christ is True Man and True God. The Christ, the Messiah, the Savior must be True God and True Man. He must be the son of David and the Son of God. He must be these things because He must keep the Law to love God and love His neighbor perfectly. He must keep these commandments perfectly so that the Law would be fulfilled in totality.

There is a promise of salvation in the Law. However, this promise is conditional. For the Law to give you salvation, you must keep it perfectly, with every breath you take. With man, this is impossible. From the moment of your conception, you are created in iniquity, bearing the sin of your fathers. You are born in the image of your fathers, all the way back to Adam. The Christ, however, bears the image of His Father. He bears the original righteousness of God Himself. This purity then allows Him to lead a perfect life, fulfilling the Law in a way that man cannot.

Yet if the Christ were only some demi-god, born of the union between a divine father and a mortal mother, his death would only save himself. Your salvation required the death of a True Man because God cannot die. Your salvation also required the resurrection of the True God because God is life. The Christ took the Law and the prophets and hung them on a cross. He nailed your sin to the foot of the cross, making you and all sinners His footstool.

In doing this, He fulfilled the Law of God. There are no more demands for the salvation of man. Everything necessary for you to sit in heavenly glory has been accomplished. This is the Gospel. It is a man. It is God. It is the Christ, fulfilling the Law and dying in your place. It is Jesus, rising victorious over the grave so that death would no longer have a claim on your soul.

The Holy Spirit concludes this section of Scripture with a summary statement. “No one was able to answer Jesus a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.” These two statements are an invitation for you to do what no one was able to do during that first Holy Week. You are now called by the Holy Spirit to answer Jesus’ question. You are being called to confess who the Christ is. You are being called to confess whose Son the Christ is.

We do this every Sunday morning when we confess the Nicene Creed. Hopefully, you do this every day as you recite the Apostles’ Creed. But you are also being called to confess the Christ in your life by loving God and loving your neighbor. You are being called to make the bold confession of your faith in word and action, every day of your life.

You have been freed from the bondage of the Law because it has been fulfilled. You are now free to strive to obey the Law because it no longer carries the punishment of eternal death for those who are in Christ. You are free to love God and love your neighbor because you have no need to fear the Law. You can now love the Law as we pray in Psalm 119.

The Holy Spirit is also calling you to dare to question Jesus. By this, the Holy Spirit is calling you to prayer. What are you praying for? Are you praying for wisdom? Are you praying for a fervent faith? Are you praying that God would not let you fall away from the faith? Are you praying for strength in the face of temptation, that you would never have need to fear the law of God, so long as you breathe?

You are a Christian. You have the freedom to boldly approach God’s throne and ask him as dear children ask their dear Father. You have this freedom because the Son of God took your flesh. The Son of God loved His Father’s will and loved you as His neighbor such that He would obey the commandments of God unto death, even death on a cross. Use this freedom to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Use this freedom to loudly confess the Christ is the son of David and the Son of God.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

 The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity – October 3, 2021

Psalm 122; Deuteronomy 10:12-21; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

St. Matthew 22:34-46

In the name of the Father, and of the T Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The twenty-first and twenty-second chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel are marked by outright confrontations between our Lord and his enemies. First, the chief priests and elders of the people challenge his authority.[1] Then the Pharisees perceive his parables to be about them and seek to physically strike him but are afraid of the crowds.[2] After more parables, the Pharisees depart to plot how they might entangle Jesus in his own teaching.[3] They send their disciples to catch Jesus endorsing paying taxes to Caesar but are again marveled by his teaching.[4] Then the Sadducees take their turn. They try to catch Jesus in a foolish question about the Resurrection. Our Lord cuts to the quick and silences the Sadducees.[5]

Believing Jesus to be caught on the ropes, the Pharisees return for another volley. They’ve brought an expert in the Law to ask what appears to be a simple question, “which is the great commandment in the law?” Atypically, Jesus gives him a direct response, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”[6] But he doesn’t stop there. “And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”[7]

The Pharisees were all experts in the Law and wanted to catch Jesus somehow denying an aspect of the Law. Their question was not genuine. The answer is part of the Shema, the daily prayer of the Jews, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”[8] This prayer was as important to them as the Our Father is to us. Asking this question would be like asking President Harrison what the fourth petition is. The answer is obvious.

The trick of the Pharisees is to get Jesus to claim his divinity. If Christ calls himself the Son of God or accepts worship, then, in their eyes, he is in violation of this first and greatest commandment. Since Jesus rarely gives a simple answer, they tee him up to ensnare himself in blasphemy.

Of course, he doesn’t. He speaks the truth – more than they were prepared to hear. The Pharisees were experts in the Law and believed the Law to be center of God’s Word. They had forgotten the other center of God’s Word – the Gospel.

These two teachings of God, the Law and the Gospel, must be properly distinguished. However, to properly distinguish them is the highest art. Only a lifetime of enlightenment by the Holy Spirit can begin to teach man how to distinguish God’s Word and yet every Christian must understand the distinction and strive to see how it is done.

The Law is that which God commands. It is good and wise. God commands men and women to be chaste inside and outside of marriage. He commands fathers to protect and provide for their families and he commands mothers to bear children, feed, and tend to them. God’s Law commands rulers to protect the innocent and punish the evil doer. God’s Law commands pastors to preach the whole counsel of God and laity to provide for their pastors. The Law is good. It is perfect. It is holy.

But since the fall, the holiness of the Law condemns us all. We cannot perfectly keep God’s Law and so our sinful blemishes stand out like red paint on a white canvass when compared to God’s Holy Law. No matter what we do, try as hard as we might, nothing of our own doing will compare to God’s Law. Its holiness condemns us.

When we look into the mirror of the Law, we will always see our shortcomings. Have you kept the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods”? “To whom have you looked for the highest good? Have you doubted God’s Word and thus committed idolatry by seeking the highest good from other sources? Which was more important in your daily decisions: God or yourself? What do you fear, what do you love, what do you trust more than God? Have good times deluded you into thinking you are in control? Are you tempted to think you have God and everything you need when you have money and earthly goods? Have bad times caused you to despair and lose hope and trust in God? Have you doubted God’s love for you when you have money problems, loss of possessions, sickness, or injury? Have you been discontent with what God has spoken of Himself in Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures? Have you put your own notions or the notions of others above what the Scriptures say about God?”[9]

The summary of the whole Law is to love God with your whole being and to love your neighbor as yourself. In many ways, these two commandments are really one. To love God with your whole self will manifest itself in love for your neighbor. In loving God, you will show forth love to God’s beloved. It is true that the Law and the Prophets, that is, the Old Testament, hangs on these commandments.

While the Old Testament may hang on these commandments, they are not the center of the Old Testament, nor any of the Word of God. If they were, then keeping these Laws would be the center of the Christian life, the way of salvation, and the only hope for man. “The Law is good; but since the fall its holiness condemns us all; it dooms us for our sin to die and has no pow’r to justify.”[10]

When the mirror of the Law has revealed the sin of our flesh, our minds, and our hearts, we must cry out for mercy. Satan would tempt us to despair saying, “This is the Word of God! There is nothing you can do! Despair and be lost! The Word of God itself has said that you can do nothing, and you are worth nothing. Curse God and die.”

The Christian knows better. The Christian, who has read from St. Matthew, knows there is another Word of God. “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?”[11] Jesus reveals himself to be the heart and center of the Word of God. In his flesh is the Gospel, that which God has done for us.

The Gospel is a promise that is already fulfilled. The Gospel is the flesh of Jesus, which was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, died, and was buried. The Gospel is the flesh of Jesus risen on the third day, ascended into heaven, and now comes to you by Word and Sacrament. The Gospel is more than the forgiveness of sin, it is the flesh of Jesus by which you are made whole. The Law says, “Do this.” The Gospel says, “It is finished.”

When Satan tempts you to despair because the Law has convicted your sin, the Christian response is, “Yes, I am a poor miserable sinner, but I have the blood of Jesus. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me! And he already has! Begone Satan, for I have the stronger Word of God, the Gospel, by which my sins are forgiven, and I am a child of the Heavenly Father!”

For the young in the faith, this is the beginning of distinguishing between the Law and the Gospel: to know the Law is command and the Gospel is promise. The task of this distinction is hard enough for many. But for the aged in the faith, it becomes more difficult. The temptation is to claim specific verses of Scripture as either Law or Gospel, as though it were always the same. This is not true. Remember, the Law and the Gospel are not opposed. They both come from God himself. The distinction is in us, on account of our sin. God commands man to be fruitful and multiply yet only God can create life.[12] A command and a promise are bound together in Holy Matrimony. It is only because of our sinful nature that the command becomes labor, and the promise is sometimes not realized.

So too, different stations in life receive the Law and the Gospel differently according to the situation. The command to baptize and teach is the sweetest Gospel, undeserved and unmerited gift for the one who receives these holy sacraments. However, for the pastor, the man called to deliver the gifts of Word and Sacrament, they are a solemn duty, a command, the failure to perform bringing harsh condemnation.[13]

The proper distinction between the Law and the Gospel is of the highest art and yet necessary for every Christian to strive toward. The Pharisees believed the Law to be the highest good of God and while it is good, the Law cannot justify. Its holiness demands perfection of man, and we cannot attain it. Yet the entire Old Testament hangs upon it because the Son of David, Jesus Christ, came to fulfill the Law. The flesh of Jesus, his Incarnation, perfect life, death, resurrection, and ascension, fulfilled the demands of the Law. He perfectly loved God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind. He perfectly loved you, his neighbor, as himself, by dying in your place. This is the Gospel, the center of the Scriptures. The Old Testament hangs on these commandments because Jesus fulfilled the promise to keep them.

In T Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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[1] St. Matthew 21:23.

[2] St. Matthew 21:45-46.

[3] St. Matthew 22:15.

[4] St. Matthew 22:22.

[5] St. Matthew 22:33-34.

[6] St. Matthew 22:37.

[7] St. Matthew 22:39-40.

[8] Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

[9] “Beichtspiegel, The First Commandment,” Brotherhood Prayer Book (Emmanuel Press, 2007), 611.

[10] “The Law of God is Good and Wise,” stanza 5.

[11] St. Matthew 22:41.

[12] Genesis 1:28; Psalm 127:3.

[13] James 3:1.