August 26, 2012
Matthew 22:34-46
Key Verse: 22:37 “Jesus replied, ‘”Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”’”
In this passage Jesus teaches the Pharisees what God wants most from us. Simply speaking, it is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind; and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Then Jesus teaches us the true identity of the Christ. He is not just the Son of David, but he is the Son of God and God incarnate. Let’s decide to love God today.
First, the greatest commandment is to love God (34-38).
Look at verse 34. “Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.” Jesus had silenced the Sadducees by proclaiming the living God, the God of the living. The Pharisees should have agreed, saying, “Amen!” But they felt challenged. They thought they needed to defend their reputations as the teachers of Israel. So they got together to test Jesus. Look at verses 35-36. “One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question, ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’” This man must have studied night and day to become an expert in the law. His question was challenging. It was to summarize the entire law of God into the main point. The experts loved to debate such questions endlessly to display their knowledge. But Jesus was different. Let’s see how Jesus answered.
Look at verses 37-38. “Jesus replied: ‘”Love 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.’” Jesus humbly quoted Deuteronomy 6:5. Jesus summarized the entire law into this one commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” However this simple commandment is overwhelming. It can seem burdensome. We struggle in “survival mode” most of the time, just making it through each day. We may be the busiest generation in history. Do we have time to love God? (I have a time for facebook but no time for God!) But if we are honest, we will admit that it is not a time problem, but a heart problem. We suffer from a kind of heart disease called “love of the world.” 1 John 2:15 says, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
Or we may be bitter toward God. If God loves me, why does God allow all the sufferings happening to me endlessly? Whenever their lives become difficult, they would harden their hearts and blame God. We understand. How easy it is for a young person from a broken home to feel abandoned by God and become bitter. Yet, God commands us to love him. Regardless of our condition, it is right to love God.
What is love? That is a good question. People have many ideas about what love is, mostly having to do with human feelings. Yet the word “love” in verse 37 comes from the Greek word “agape.” In Christian theology, “Agape” is the love of God or Jesus for humankind but also human’s reciprocal love for God. “Agape” is directed not only by the feelings but also by the will. Still we don’t have an idea of what kind of love is agape. I think that Jesus already told us what agape is. Agape is to love with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul and with all one’s mind.
Let’s read verse 37 again. “Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Firstly, we should love God with our hearts. Personally, I interpret heart as emotion. If you say to someone, “I love you!” with a poker face, he or she may look at you very strangely. I believe that everyone loved someone at least one time. You are just so happy and joyful to be with someone. You can spend your money and time willingly for him or her. You smile all day if you love someone with your heart. It is same with loving God. If you love God, your heart should be filled with a fresh feeling you know well of. If you don’t have such feeling toward God, you don’t love God with your heart. When the ark was being carried into the City of David, King David was so happy and he danced and leaped before God with all his might. Even though he was a king, he did not care embarrassing himself. God alone was more than enough for David.
Secondly, we should love God with our souls. Actually it is hard to define soul. Some people think that soul is the same as one’s spirit. If our hearts are the surface waves of our lives, our souls are the deep undercurrent. It is where our life direction is set. It is where our important decisions are made. It is where our determination lives. To love God with our souls is to have a clear identity as God’s child, and to commit our lives to God. To love God with our souls is trusting God’s love even if some painful thing happens or we are in a hardship. Pastor Son’s two sons were killed by their communist classmate. However, Pastor Son adopted the killer as his son because Jesus commanded to love one’s enemy. Pastor Son loved God with all his souls. One man went to the sea with his son and son’s friend. When the father saw them drowning, he cast the only lifebelt to his son’s friend and shouted to his son, “Son, I love you! I have to save him! Your friend does not know Jesus!” He trusted God with all his soul.
Lastly, we should love God with our minds. In Deuteronomy 6:5, “mind” is replaced by “strength”. If you love someone, you squeeze out all ideas of how to please your sweetheart. We have to use our mind fully not partially. For example, several years ago, I bought a necklace to please Rebecca. She changed it with another one right away. Many parents save money or purchase education insurance for their children’s future. I think that Noah was a man who loved God with all his mind and with all his strength. God commanded Noah to make a great ark. The ark was 137m long, 23m wide and 14m high. For me, it is so challenging to make a small bookshelf. At that time, there were only 4 men, Noah and his three sons for this great project. Just cutting and moving trees for the ark was a great job. Noah had to learn and study to make such a giant ark. Just imagine how much he struggled to obey God’s commandment. Noah loved God with all his mind and all his strength. It is impossible to love someone without using your mind and strength. If we love God, we should struggle to know what he wants from us and use all our mind and strength to continue our love relationship with Him.
Second, love your neighbor as yourself (39-40).
Jesus continued in verses 39-40 as follows: “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” This is a quotation from Leviticus 19:18. It summarizes the second part of the Ten Commandments. Love for God is always accompanied by love for others. 1 John 4:20 says, “If anyone says, ‘I 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.” We must love others; it is God’s command. Then, how can we love others? Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Again the Greek word is “agape.” God wants us to love others with the love of God. It begins by accepting people as they are, as God accepted us. Sometimes we become conditional, demanding others to meet our standard. We must accept others as they are. Then we must love others in a way that builds up their humanity and spirituality. Obviously, if someone does not know Christ, his greatest need is for the gospel. We must share the gospel in love. This love should extend to all kinds of people throughout the world. We must love hungry Africans and depressed Canadians. We must love Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. New Academic semester is coming up! This means news students are also coming. We pray that we may love our neighbors with the words of God.
Most of all, we must love our Christian brothers. Jesus set the example. At the Last Supper, Jesus washed their smelly feet one by one with his own hands. Then Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (Jn 13:34). Tertullian, an early Christian author, remarked how Christian’s love attracted pagan’s notice: “What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving kindness. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another.’” We may ask ourselves. “How can we love God practically in our daily life?” One way is to love our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. Let’s embrace each other even though you don’t like him or her naturally. We have many brothers and sisters who need help or are in a hardship or trouble. Let’s kneel down before God and pray for them with tears.
Third, the Christ is the Son of God (41-46).
Jesus loved the Pharisees and wanted to save them. They needed most a right concept of the Christ. They needed to see Jesus as the Christ. Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They replied, “The son of David.” It was their textbook answer based on Scripture (2 Sam 7:12-16, Isa 9:6-7). They expected the Christ to restore David’s earthly kingdom. It was a partial concept.
Jesus gently corrected them with the word of God. Look at verses 43-45. “He said to them, ‘How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him “Lord”? For he says, “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 can he be his son?’” Jesus quoted Psalm 110 to explain the true identity of the Christ. In that Psalm, David calls the Christ, who is his descendant, his “Lord.” It would be somewhat like Missionary David calling David Jr. his master. It does not make sense humanly. But it is possible if the Christ is God in the flesh. And this is exactly who Jesus is. Jesus is God.
Psalm 110 is a conversation in heaven. God the Father tells the Christ to sit at his right hand, the position of power and authority over all creation. As he does so, the Father promises to put all his enemies under his feet. These enemies are the devil, and the power of sin and death. Jesus destroyed them all and reigns victorious at the right hand of God. What is happening in history now? God is putting everything under Jesus’ feet. God is subduing the nations through those who obey the world mission command. This happens as the gospel is preached person by person, community by community, nation by nation. Finally, Jesus Christ will reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. Before him every knee will bow; every tongue will confess that he is the Christ to the glory of God the Father. This truth is underscored in all of the parables and teachings that Jesus shared with the Pharisees.
Jesus had unlocked a part of the Scriptures that the Pharisees never understood. Jesus wanted them to accept the Christ and be saved. They saw the Son of God before their eyes. It was time to stop asking questions and to make a decision to accept him for their own salvation. This is what Jesus really wanted from them.
Today Jesus taught us the greatest commandment. It is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. We can do so when we accept the love of Jesus. Let’s decide to love God and love our neighbors.