Matthew 22:34-40: The Second Greatest Commandment

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus in Matthew 22:39

“The point [of loving your neighbor as yourself] is not to meet a temporary need or change a startling statistic; the point is to exalt the glory of Christ as we express the gospel of Christ through the radical generosity of our lives.” (David Platt, Radical, p. 135)

“Blogging theology is far easier that living it. Writing on ministry is easier than actually being a servant. Beware of self-deception.” (Rick Warren, Twitter, Feb 17, 2011)

Jesus is cornered in the temple by those in religious power who seek to discredit Him.  An expert in the law steps forward, testing Him (v. 35), and asks a question:  "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  This is the great and foremost commandment (vv. 36-38).

Then, without being asked, Jesus also mentions the second greatest commandment, “to love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 39).   And He adds this commentary: “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets" (v. 40).  

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus faces a similar encounter. Upon hearing the command to love your neighbor, someone asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29).  Jesus answers by telling the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37).   Whereas the religious leaders in the story chose to pass by on the other side, a Samaritan stops and gives aid to a hurting man.  The Samaritans were a despised race (much like the Roma or “gypsies” of Eastern Europe or the Toba of South America).   Jesus ends the story by affirming that a neighbor is not one of the same religion or race, but one who shows mercy in spite of differences in religion or race.   Jesus then commands, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).  

And I see a resurgence today of Christians who “go and do likewise.”   One thing I have learned from my kids’ generation is the value of mercy ministries.   While I have proclaimed Christ on secular universities and in Muslim lands, my kids in the name of Jesus have hugged AIDS orphans and loved on those living in trash dumps in third world countries.  

In our world today just about every place where the gospel can be freely proclaimed has heard of Christ; frontiers in missions are closed to those who are exclusively proclaimers.   It will take “missions of mercy” who show love to their neighbors to get the message of Christ into unreached places.   Emergency aid workers, school teachers, medical professionals, even business people can take Christ into parts of the world that are closed to traditional missionaries.   

Yet we must guard against the trend that the social gospel frequently loses the gospel.  That is why we must continually be reminded that loving one’s neighbor as your self is the second greatest commandment; the first is to love the Lord.   As John Piper reminds us, the best way to love our neighbor is to warn him of the horrors of hell.

Jesus said on these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets (v. 40).    Jesus said nearly the same thing in Matthew 7:12, also known as the Golden Rule: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”  Each of the 600 plus commandments in the law of Moses, including the Ten Commandments, can be categorized under either “love God” or “love your neighbor.”   Thus our faith has both a vertical (love God) and a horizontal (love others) component to it, making the cross even a more appropriate symbol of our faith.

Yet I am also troubled and convicted by the second commandment.  Do I really love my neighbor as myself?   Am I as concerned for their health care and family relationships as I am mine?  Do I care about their eternal destiny as I do about my own family?   Is my justification for sometimes passing by beggars “because they will spend it on alcohol” merely an excuse for my own selfishness?   As Doc Holiday said in an old western, “It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds.”   Lord, may the fruit of my love for You be more about my love for my neighbor and less about my passion for theology.  

Matthew 22:34-38: Why must we be commanded to love God?

"I want atheism to be true …. It isn't just that I don't believe in God... It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.”  (Thomas Nagel, The Last Word)

Peter said, “Woman, I do not know Him,”…The Lord turned and looked at Peter.  Peter remembered the word of the Lord… “Before a rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.”  And he left and wept bitterly.  (Luke 22:57, 61-62)

It is the week of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.   He is in the temple in Jerusalem teaching.   Repeatedly He is challenged by the religious establishment of Israel; repeatedly He answers their challenges and the crowds are “astonished at His teaching” (Matthew 22: 33).   A lawyer steps forward and asks a question, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment,” (Matthew 22:36-38).

Since this is mentioned by Jesus as the great and foremost commandment, I believe it deserves a second and even a third look.   First, we examined love and why it is essential to our faith in God.   Second, God was emphasized and why He is worthy of our love.   Here, we will explore why we must be commanded to love God.    If loving God is the core of our faith and if God Himself is worthy of our love, then why must we be commanded to love God?  Shouldn’t loving God be as natural to us as thirsting for water or as instinctual as closing our eyes before a blinding light?  

But loving God is not natural for us.  We are predisposes to seek independence from God.   Our natures have been corrupted and we seem to be hardwired to rebel against God.    Yes, man is capable of great good; he fights disease and injustice and shows kindness to strangers and even altruism to loved ones.   Yet man is also capable of great evil: wars, concentration camps, man-induced famine, egotism and pride.   Paul writes that we are all “under sin,” as he quotes from the Psalms:  “There is none righteous, not even one…there is none who seeks for God”, (Romans 3:9-11). 

In Eden, everything “was very good” (Genesis 1:31).   Adam and Eve enjoyed a perfect paradise and had perfect fellowship with God.    Still, they disobeyed God (Genesis 2:16-17; 3:11-13).   The Lord rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt; He drowned Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, allowing the children of Israel to escape.   Even though the Lord provided for Israel in the wilderness, the people quickly began to grumble against the Lord (Exodus 16:2).    Before long the children of Israel were ascribing the greatness of the Lord to a man-made golden calf: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4).   All of heaven must have shuddered at these words!

This pattern can be traced throughout the Old Testament and all the way through the New Testament.   The church at Ephesus was the model church for all of Christendom at the close of the first century (Revelation 2:2-3).   They toiled, persevered, and did not grow weary.   They did not tolerate evil men and they put to the test those who call themselves apostles.   Yet the church in Ephesus was told, “You have left your first love” (Revelation 2:4); they had to be commanded again to love God.   Even today many successful churches need to hear: “you have left your first love.”

I was witnessing on a campus here in Budapest when I had a conversation with a healthy, middle-aged woman.  She spoke of the peace she had as she contemplated her own death.  Yet as I brought up Jesus, she quickly became agitated and moved on.    The human heart is inclined to anything or anyone…except Jesus. 

 

Robert Robinson knew this tendency of the human heart when wrote the great hymn, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing:  “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;  Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,  Seal it for Thy courts above.”   To love God must be commanded because of the frailness and wickedness of our human hearts.    

Still, in spite of the rebellion of the human heart, God draws us to Himself.    “BUT GOD (two of the most beautiful words in the whole Bible) being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.  By grace you have been saved,” (Ephesians 2:4-5). 

Matthew 22:35-38: Why is loving God the Greatest Commandment?

“You shall love the Lord…this is the great and foremost commandment,” Jesus, Matthew 22:27-28

I decided that only religion - only a nonargumentative faith in a surrogate parent who, unlike my real parent, embodied love, power and justice in equal measure – could do the trick Plato wanted done [of a single unifying vision that explains the universe].  (Trotsky and the Wild Orchids, an autobiography by Richard Rorty, a postmodern and influential atheistic philosopher.)  

"You have made us, O Lord, for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." (Confessions,  Augustine) 

It is days before His crucifixion.  Jesus is teaching in the temple of Jerusalem.   He is repeatedly being challenged by the religious elite of Israel.   Testing Him (v.35), a lawyer asks, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (v. 36)  To which Jesus replies, quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.”  (v. 37)

Why does God command that we love Him?  Isn’t God like a megalomaniac dictator who erects hundreds of statues of himself and demands strict allegiance?  Why is God not most please when we love a great human being like Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Why must we love God?   Is God conceited?

Simply (but not simplistically), God is worthy of our love because of who He is.   Not only is He the Uncaused First Cause, but He is the embodiment of love, power and justice (that Rorty craved but never acknowledged).  God doesn’t merely love; He is love.  God doesn’t merely exercise justice; He is justice.  God doesn’t merely possess power; He is power.    Any high example of love, justice and power are but shadows of the Almighty.

In my opinion, nowhere else in Holy Scripture is the character of God on display as it is in Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) yet Christ died in our place (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24); God’s wrath on sin is not merely dismissed, rather it is fully satisfied (Romans 5:9).   Since the penalty of our sin has been extracted and justice accomplished, salvation is now offered as a free gift to all who ask for it (Revelation 21:6; Romans 10:9).  

The cross of Jesus Christ is that place where the Greatest Love in the universe merge with the Greatest Judge in the universe.    And when Christ rose from the dead, the greatest enemy of man, death, was rendered powerless.  Christ is, as Anselm of Canterbury said a thousand years ago, the greatest conceivable being, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”  Think about it: one cannot improve on the attributes of Jesus.   All positive attributes of other gods and prophets find their superior expression in the Lord Jesus Christ!  

In World War II the Nazis executed over 1 million people at the Auschwitz Concentration camp.  Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe was Auschwitz prisoner #16670.  His crime: hiding Jews from the Nazis.  In July 1941, three prisoners escaped, prompting the Nazis to pick ten men at random to be starved to death in an underground cell as retribution.  When one of the men cried, "My wife! My children!”, Kolbe volunteered to take his place. 

For the next two weeks Maximillian Kolbe ministered to and prayed with his cellmates until dehydration and starvation claimed everyone.  Kolbe was the last of the ten to die.   Only someone who understood what Christ did for him could do what Kolbe did at Auschwitz.   Maximillian Kolbe’s substitionary death for one innocent man points us to Him who substitionally gave “His life as a ransom for many” who are guilty (Matthew 20:28).  Christ alone is worthy to be loved with all of [our] heart, all of [our] soul and all of [our] mind (v. 37).    

Kolbe in Auschwitz stepping forward to offer himself as a substitute.

Matthew 22:34-38: The Greatest Commandment

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…soul and…mind."  Jesus in Matthew 22:37.

“I call [love to God] the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for his own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and of one’s neighbor for the sake of God.”  (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, iii, x, 16)

The problem with the world is not hedonism; the problem with the world is secular hedonism's failure to point us to Him who truly satisfies. To know God and to be swept up in the praises of God, this is what truly satisfies the human soul. (John Piper, Passion for the Supremacy of God)

I still remember one summer sitting in hot Moby Gym at Colorado State University at Campus Crusade for Christ’s (Cru) staff conference.   Author Brennan Manning was speaking.  What he said then still rings in my head today:  Christianity is a moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day love affair with the Great God of the Universe. 

Man wants to “earn” his salvation and therefore make God his debtor by “owing” him heaven.   That is characteristic of religion; religion is man-centered and man-exalting.   Each and every religion falls under this description.  Except Christianity.   In this sense, Christianity is not a religion; rather it is a relationship with God.   It is not about man making himself acceptable to God; it is about God revealing Himself and reconciling man to Himself through Jesus Christ. 

Jesus silenced the Sadducees (v. 34).  Then the Sadducees and the Pharisees gathered themselves together (v. 34) in a way that is reminiscent of how “the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed” (Psalm 2:2).   After putting forth a long list of opponents in their attempt to discredit Jesus (Matthew 21:23, 45; 22:15-16, 23), the next person paraded out is a lawyer (v. 35).   One can almost hear the Lord in heaven laugh and scoff (Psalm 2:4). 

The lawyer tests Jesus, “Teacher, which is the great commandment of the Law?”   (v. 36).   The Law of Moses had over 600 commandments to be obeyed.  The Pharisees had their favorite laws and the Sadducees had theirs.   No matter which Law Jesus chose, He would alienate one of the two groups, thus providing a reason for one of them to accuse and seize Jesus (see Luke 19:47 and 20:20).

Jesus answered unhesitatingly by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind” (v.37).   Whereas one can divide this commandment into three components of heart, soul and mind, the over-arching idea is that we love God with all we have.    Our affections, our essence, our reasoning all revolve around and lead us toward loving God.   This is the great and foremost commandment (v. 38).  

Jesus reached deep into the Old Testament for His answer to the lawyer’s question.  Loving God is not merely a New Testament concept.   To love God is a thread that runs throughout the pages of Scripture from the Garden of Eden in the opening chapters of Genesis to the New Jerusalem in the closing verses of Revelation.    

Recently I was on a beach in Eastern Europe with some evangelicals students from several countries.  We were sharing our faith and I had to look hard to find an English speaker.  After approaching nearly 30 people, I finally found a young man named Andre who spoke English;  we talked about Jesus Christ.   Andre had all the right answers regarding Jesus Christ.  Yet what he lacked was critical.  He had no heart knowledge, no category, no passion, for loving God.   

Being a Christian is not a mere intellectual acknowledgment of God; for even the demons believe in God, James 2:19 reminds us.  We are no longer strangers and aliens toward God (Ephesians 2:19), worshiping from afar.  We do not pace aimlessly in the ante-chamber of God; yet through Jesus we are ushered into the very presence of God (Hebrews 4:16).  As His adopted children we cry, “Abba!  Father!”  (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6).   What a mighty God we serve!