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Introduction
C.S. Lewis: To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.
HAVE CONGREGATION TURN TO MATTHEW 22.34.
I.
A Controversial Question (vv.34–36)
You can be tested with good motivations or bad ones.
It seems there was a mix in this group.
Good Question; Bad Motivation
Not all Pharisees were hypocritical and wicked.
Many followed Jesus after his resurrection.
And at least one of the Pharisees questioning Jesus was satisfied with His answer—and that speaks well of him.
We learn this in the Gospel of Mark, who tells the same story but includes some details Matthew didn’t.
Jesus tells this particular Pharisee he isn't far from God's kingdom.
However, the majority of those who questioned Jesus about the most important command in the law were hostile.
They asked Jesus this question "to trap him."
What is the great commandment?
II.
A Surprising Answer (vv.
37–38)
Jesus’ answer is masterfully simple, direct, and clear: love the Lord your God with all of you.
Here he is, of course, quoting Deuteronomy 6, one of the key passages in the Old Testament describing to Israel what God expected of them.
I say this is clear, but what indeed does this mean?
What does "love" mean?
What do you think?
We’ve got to clear out one false idea before we can understand what Jesus is saying: the role of the Greek word ἀγάπη (agape).
Many Christians who have been around the Christian block a few times know—or think they know—that the hidden key to understanding this command is the Greek word translated “love” here.
Ἀγάπη is supposed to carry a great deal of theological weight.
It is one of the few New Testament Greek words that many Christians know, and it is very commonly believed to mean a rational and self-sacrificial choice to do what is best for someone else regardless of how you feel.
People commonly believe that this word ἀγάπη means a specific kind of Christian love.
Christians who have been around the block perhaps one additional time commonly think that ἀγάπη must be distinguished from φιλέω and ἔρως, other Greek words for love which focus much more on feelings.
So what does ἀγάπη mean?
Well, how do we know what a word in the Bible means anyway?
Look it up in the dictionary
Look it up in the dictionary, right?
But how does the dictionary know?
The writers of dictionaries, who are just people like you and me, observe how a given word is used in the Bible.
How, for example, did you figure out as a child what “bicycle” means?
You listened to how people used the word and you figured out quickly that “bicycle” means a pedal-powered vehicle with two wheels.
Your parents never referred to “tricycles” as “bicycles.”
They might have called a “motorcycle” a “bike,” but they never called it a “bicycle.”
Without ever thinking about it, you picked up with perfect clarity what a “bicycle” is, and in your entire life you have never used the word “incorrectly.”
You just know one when you see one.
Greek speakers would have learned the word ἀγάπη the same way.
And if we ask how we know what the word means, we have to note that NT writers do not hesitate to use it to speak of overtly sinful loves:
Follow me here: if agape means “self-sacrificial, non e-motional Christian love,” then these verses would be like someone saying, “That’s a bicycle, but it has two wheels.”
Ἀγάπη can’t mean self-sacrificial, non-emotional, unconditional Christian love.
So what does it mean?
Carson (Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God): The best English example is simply the verb love.
One may use it for romantic love, platonic love, emotional love, the love of God, and more.
The context defines and delimits the word, precisely as it does the verbs for love in the pages of holy Scripture.”
The word “love” in the Bible is like the word “love” in English.
It just means liking something a lot, finding that your heart goes out to something, that your soul is bent in that direction.
Emotions are most definitely included.
So is thinking.
“Love” is just a name we give to the way your “inner man” is pointing.
Look at the terminology Jesus uses: What does it mean to love God with your whole heart and soul?
Is there a big difference between these two things, heart and soul?
There seems to be little difference between "heart" and "soul" in Acts 4:32, where the early believers were said to be “of one heart and one soul.”
In addition, all major translations render ψυχή with heart in Ephesians 6:6, where Paul instructs believers to obey the will of God ἐκ ψυχῆς, “from the heart” (cf.
Col 3:23).
And several translations render ψυχή with mind (one with heart) in Acts 15:24.
Jesus is not trying to dissect man into separate bits but to add up overlapping descriptions of what’s inside us to make sure we know that no corner of our being is exempt from the command to love God.
It’s kind of like saying that a contract is "null and void.”
If it’s “null” then why bother saying it’s “void”?
You’re just leaving no stone unturned.
You’re making sure all your bases are covered.
Your heart and your soul, in Scripture, are not distinguishable parts of you.
They’re basically synonymous.
I couldn’t say to my wife, “I love you with all my heart and a significant majority of my soul.”
To love God with one is to love him with the other.
And that is what we are called to do.
Jesus adds this word “mind” to Deut. 6.
Here again, however, Jesus is not moving over to a separate part of us but to an overlapping description of what’s inside us.
We think of the “mind” as solely cognitive, intellectual.
But the Bible doesn’t.
The Bible doesn’t split up the inner man into separate parts that are all angling for the top job, jostling with the other parts for supremacy.
Everything inside you: your heart, soul, mind, desires, feelings, motivations, purposes, strength, aspirations, yearnings, impulses—everything needs to be pointed toward one ultimate point: the Lord your God.
When you drink orange juice or get a big bill you weren’t expecting or wake up in the middle of the night for no reason, at all times, your heart needs to be pointed in a Godward direction.
So, on the count of three, I’d like everyone to snap their fingers with me and just do this.
Okay?
One, two, … That’s not possible, is it?
In fact, you may be objecting in your own mind and heart and soul: “How can God command me to do something like this which is not under my direct control?
Is God allowed to command me to do things I can’t do?”
John Piper: It is not biblical to say that the only virtues God can require of me are the ones that I am good enough to perform.
If I am so bad that I can’t delight in what is good, that is no reason God can’t command me to love the good.
If I am so corrupt that I can’t enjoy what is infinitely beautiful, that does not make me less guilty for disobeying the command to delight in God (Ps.
37:4).
It makes me more guilty.
Jesus says in v. 38 that this is the “first and great commandment."
What’s the most important commandment in American law?
Probably the command against premeditated murder?
A society’s laws, and the penalties it attaches to those laws, express what it values most.
Violent crimes attack the one thing most precious to most Americans: their own lives.
So I’m presuming that such crimes are punished more severely than others.
Jail times for jaywalking are probably, I’m guessing, much lower than jail times for murder—except in very uptight cities.
So what happens to someone who breaks the first and great commandment?
III.
A Practical Implication (vv.
39–40)
Love for God inevitably leads to love for his image-bearers.
“Love” here means just what “love” in Jesus’ previous words meant.
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