THE SETTING FOR JESUS’ TEACHING

In Matthew 22 Jesus says that love for God is the first and greatest duty of mankind. This text marks the fourth in a series of questions the Jewish leaders put to Jesus, always intent on testing or trapping him. They have asked him questions about his authority (21:23), about taxes (22:15–17), and about the resurrection (22:23–28). Jesus has answered each one, and answered well. In fact, his answer to the last question from the Sadducees was so successful that they resolved to ask him no more. When they heard “that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together” to try one last time to test or trap Jesus (22:34).

Matthew says, “One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ ” (22:35–36). This scribe, this expert in God’s law, sounds polite. He calls Jesus “teacher,” but he poses his question to test him. The rabbis did debate this question, so perhaps the Pharisees hoped the question would ensnare Jesus in one of their controversies, for whatever he said, someone would disagree. More ominously, the question invited Jesus to single out one of God’s laws as the greatest. But the Lord God himself had declared and inscribed the Ten Commandments, so that whatever command Jesus chose, the Pharisees could say he annulled or neglected the others.

At any rate, the teachers liked to discuss what commands were weightier and why, so they were ready to argue with Jesus, whatever he said. But Jesus’ reply was neither polemical nor evasive. He 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” (22:37–38).

We love God with heart and soul when we embrace him in our deepest convictions and commitments.

• We love God with the mind when we understand our past and our present as he does and dedicate our future plans and goals to him.

• We love God with our strength when we dedicate the physical body, its muscles and energy, to him. We love God with our strength if we follow him with a determined will and with moral resolve in the face of adversity.

The knowledge of God is a heart-knowledge (see Exod. 35:5; 1 Sam. 2:1; 2 Sam. 7:3; Pss. 4:4; 7:10; 15:2; Isa. 6:10; Matt. 5:8; 12:34; 22:37; Eph. 1:18; etc.). The heart is the “center” of the personality, the person himself in his most basic character. Scripture represents it as the source of thought, of volition, of attitude, of speech. It is also the seat of moral knowledge. In the Old Testament, heart is used in contexts where conscience would be an acceptable translation (see 1 Sam. 24:5).

Medieval theologians used to say, “Repetition is the mother of learning.” That is, to learn something, we must hear it repeatedly

(Matt. 22:37). In other places, Jesus commands us to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27)

In short, we should love the Lord with all our faculties. If we (unlike the ancients) regard a sense of humor as a faculty, then we should love the Lord with our humor. We eschew coarse and degrading humor. We laugh with people, not at people. We ridicule what is ridiculous and evil and laugh with joy at what is excellent and noble. In these ways we love God (and neighbor) with our humor.

What does the Bible mean when it commands us to love our neighbor as ourself? It does not teach us to love ourselves, nor especially that we must learn to love ourselves before we can learn to love others, as pop-psychology masquerading as biblical teaching would have us believe. Rather, this verse assumes that we already do love ourselves. This is true even if we don’t like ourselves very much. In fact, it is even true of the person who commits suicide. Loving ourselves has nothing to do with feeling good about ourselves, and everything to do with serving ourselves. The Bible is urging us to show the same care and concern for others as we naturally do for ourselves. We feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, house ourselves, rest ourselves, bathe ourselves, entertain ourselves, and so on. There is a sense in which even those with what the gurus of psychology call ‘low self-esteem’ indulge themselves with pity. Similarly, what could be more self-centered than to take one’s life, leaving the rest of the world to pick up the pieces? The loving of oneself is not a command to follow but a problem to correct. Paul warns of the difficult last days when men will be ‘lovers of self’ (2 Tim. 3:2). The aim of the command is to get selfish, self-serving, self-loving people to love and serve others to the same degree as they love themselves. The law and the gospel agree that this is an important element of God’s will for His people. We were called by Christ to love one another, and we are called by the Law to love our neighbor. Who is my neighbor? Funny you should ask. Our neighbor, as the Parable of the Good Samaritan shows, is whoever crosses our path (Luke 10:30 ff.). We are commanded not so much to love our neighbor as be a neighbor, or behave in a neighborly manner towards whomever we encounter.