Scripture: Matthew 22:34–46
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 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.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
44‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet” ’?
45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
Questions
- What does it mean to “the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”?
- What does it mean to love my neighbor as myself?
- Who constitutes my neighbor?
Background
Related Scriptures: Luke 10:25-37
When Jesus is asked which commandment is greatest, he is being asked which is the most important for people to keep.
Matthew is the only Gospel to include that Jesus’ words summarize the prophets and shows an emphasis that the prophets were trying to show people how to live out God’s instruction for life.
Cyril of Alexandria: Therefore the first commandment teaches every kind of godliness. For to love God with the whole heart is the cause of every good. The second commandment includes the righteous acts we do toward other people. The first commandment prepares the way for the second and in turn is established by the second. For the person who is grounded in the love of God clearly also loves his neighbor in all things himself. The kind of person who fulfills these two commandments experiences all the commandments.[1]
Reflection
One of the great lessons I have learned is that when we read the Bible we do so with an invisible pair of glasses. We all have a lens that gets between us and the text, this lens is made up of our culture, our experiences, our learning, and everything else that helps define me. There are many different ways to read the Bible and look at life and not all are equally beneficial. We cannot escape our lens, and that is one of the issues Jesus addresses in this passage in Matthew. The question the Pharisees ask Jesus is essentially what is the lens through which you see Scripture and the world. When Jesus says, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”, we should understand that he means these commandments are the lens that we need to read the Bible through. We cannot shed the lens that help focus our minds when we read Scripture, instead we need to learn to use the right lens. And for Jesus the correct lens for us to read Scripture through is “how does this help me love God with everything I have and am, and how does this help me to love my neighbor as myself”.
Not only is this the lens we should use to read the Bible it is the lens that should govern our lives. Christian tradition has long talked about perfection—“ Therefore let us go on toward perfection” Hebrews 6:1. Perfection does not mean that we do everything right; rather it means that we do everything from the right motivation. Perfection is about moving toward love. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” 1 John 4:18. Being perfect is about reaching our fullest potential and our fullest potential is not in what we do but in our character. Being perfect is about shaping ourselves to act according to God’s character which is defined in two places, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” (Exodus 34:6), and “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8). Scripture is trying to teach us this simple lesson, act like God. We are told who God is and we are told to read all of Scripture through the lens of God’s character. Because the Bible is meant to be a revelation of God’s loving character it is only when we commit to loving God and neighbor that we begin to see the Bible in the right way. And because God created the world to reflect God’s purposes it is only when we live by this same rule that find our true place in it.
And lest we forget, our neighbors are not simply the people who we are attached to like family or friends, they are not simply those we live nearby. Jesus uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to teach us that our neighbors are anyone we can help. Our neighbors are those people we encounter, and loving them as ourselves means that we are as concerned for their well-being as we are for our own. The Bible breaks this down for us when we read passages like Malachi 3:5 “Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.” The prophet is pronouncing judgment on those who do not show love to the widow, orphan, the worker, and the foreigner. This is not the pronouncement of a vindictive God who wants to punish people. It is the pronouncement of a loving God who can no longer tolerate when people are failing to love their neighbors. Scripture is not mean to be used to draw lines between me and others so much as it is meant to draw me toward the wellbeing of others.
You are going to have a lens which you use to read Scripture and through which you interpret the world, this is unavoidable. Jesus wants to ensure that his followers understand what the proper lens is and how that lens should be applied to our lives.
[1] Manlio Simonetti, ed., Matthew 14-28, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture 157–58.
Leave a Reply