Opening Prayer
God the Holy Spirit, write the law of love in our hearts by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: Matthew 22:34-46
But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 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 then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool”‘? “If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?” And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.
Devotion
“You shall love.” What a beautiful commandment! What is better than love? There is nothing like it, and there is no salvation except in it; therefore it also says: “Love God above all things and your neighbor as yourself … do this and you will live” (Luk 10:28-29). And what a just command! What the Lord Himself has given us, and what alone saves us, He surely wants us to have. He gave us His love in the beginning, and without it we are lost. In it is everything else that is good; therefore all His commandments are only reflections of this one. Great and holy and righteous is the command to love!
But, alas, we have lost love. And the commandment cannot give it back to us; it can only expose our poverty and condemn our unrighteousness. There we stand, unfortunate, with the holy commandment over us. It requires what we have received, but have thrown away, – what we must have in order to be happy, but now are completely lacking. There we stand, lost and condemned, and the commandment cannot help us; for it can only demand, but it gives nothing at all. We must have love, but do not have it at all; we must love and yet we cannot! So then we must die and be lost because of the beautiful and righteous command!
But is there no way my heart can give up its resistance to the commandment and agree with the law, so that the holy command, the dear will of my God, can once more become my will and my heart’s desire? Is there no commandment of the law given, so I can return to keeping the great commandment? Isn’t there any command of the law I could begin to keep, so that little by little I could attain to the great commandment? Foolish question! Can one who is evil do good? “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots” (Jer 13:23)? No, all the commands of the law demand love, but none of them can give us a trace of it. But praise God; He has also given us another teaching: the Gospel of His only-begotten Son, and by it the Holy Spirit can regenerate us, lead our heart over to the side of the heavenly commands and make this into life and truth within us. David’s Son is David’s Lord, the Man Jesus Christ is God’s Only-begotten, true God from eternity to eternity. In Him love has come on earth anew. He Himself is the fulfillment of the great commandment, and He is love for us, in our place. So God determined, and so He reckons it and it is fulfilled. Christ has fulfilled the commandment for me; loved with perfect love, was obedient in everything, submitted to the Father’s will even to death on the cross. And through this I have pardon for my transgression and the right to salvation, which is in the commandment of the law: “Keep the law, and you will live.” Christ has kept it for me, and thus I have kept it. The Holy Spirit gives me grace to believe this, so I live and die in Jesus’ substitutionary merit. And since I am in Christ, then He is also in me. Since His love has entered my heart, now we can speak of carrying out the individual commandments, not in order to keep the great commandment, but because this commandment is now in us and we are in it. For now my heart lives in the great commandment, and the commandment lives in my heart. Now we can and we will practice love by obeying all our Lord’s commands, so that selfishness, hatred, greed, and all carnal lusts that are still in us die and are destroyed, so that we can sit in the midst of the heaven of love.
So, far from abolishing the law with grace, we rather establish it by the Gospel. “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Joh 1:17). Love, eternal and steadfast, the heavenly and immovable law, truth itself, that shall and must be accomplished in us, comes to us by Moses as “the law of the commandments,” demanding and commanding, but never becomes the truth in us. For it can only show us our need and be our “tutor until Christ” (Gal 3:24). But by Jesus love has become grace, and then it comes to us. God’s loving purpose concerning the world, the truth itself, is in and through Christ from eternity, but by the Gospel and faith it becomes the truth in us.
Do you know this in your own experience? Is the command to love the great commandment for you? Is it precious and sweet and blessed? Do you understand St. John who isn’t writing about a new command, but an old command, and yet a new one that is true in God and in us (1Jo 2:7-8)? Then you have begun to know the joy of love and the sorrow of love. Now diligently exercise the power God gave you. Listen to God’s Spirit; hear Jesus’ voice, then He keeps you in His heart, – then your sin and need and pain shall die. Amen.
Closing Prayer
God grant us this. Amen.
Hymn
Jesus, Thy boundless love to me
No thought can reach, no tongue declare;
Unite my thankful heart with Thee
And reign without a rival there.
To Thee alone, dear Lord, I live;
Myself to Thee, dear Lord, I give.
Gerhardt: Jesus, Thy boundless love to me L 304:1 ELH 372:1 tr. J. Wesley;
tune: Surrey