Trinity 18

Matthew 22:34-46 - Trinity Eighteen - October 4, 2015
The Spirit of the Law & the Spirit of the Gospel

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When people reject the doctrine of the Church which is taught to us in Scripture, it soon follows that decent morality is rejected as well.  When Christian teaching goes, so does Christian living.  

The solution to fixing the growing godlessness in our culture seems to be simple enough.  More law!  Obviously this is true, and, of course, it would work to a certain extent.  It is, after all, the duty of the governing authorities, whom God has ordained, to enforce the law.  The law is good.  It is written by nature on the hearts of all men.  It keeps wickedness in bounds by coercing people to behave better for fear of punishment.  We call this the first use of the law when it acts as a curb.  Certainly our culture could benefit from a healthy dose of the law. 

But while this would promote virtue in a nation that sorely lacks it, it won’t reverse the trend of unbelief that is the true cause of it all.  The only effective weapon and armor that the Church has against the influences of this fallen world is the doctrine that she has learned from Holy Scripture.  It is not only the distinction between right and wrong that the world needs in order to understand true godliness.  It is the distinction between the law and the Gospel.  Only Christ teaches us this. 

This is what Jesus defends in our Gospel lesson this morning.

We can get as active in politics as we want.  But we will never solve the deepest problems our nation faces.  It’s nonetheless good to take on our opponents in the pursuit of truth and morality, isn’t it?  Yes.  Fighting for truth and righteousness is always good.  But the task is endless and there is no promise.  The world will always find another way to ruin itself.  But while we one can argue politics all day and accomplish little more than raising our blood pressure, arguing theology is never a waste of time.  There are at least four good reasons why we should. 

First, Jesus tells us to confess him before men.  Peter tells us to be ready with a defense for our hope.  We shouldn’t fail to speak simply because we want to avoid the unpleasant awkwardness of it all.  We should speak as often as we have opportunity to do so even if doing so is even more taboo than talking politics in most places. 

Second, we never know when our words – since and so long as they are really God’s words – might persuade and bring one to repentance.  The Holy Spirit works through no other means, after all, than through his word. 

Third, when we dispute with those who deny the word of God, even if it might seem unlikely that they will change their minds, we may well still strengthen and encourage and defend those who would otherwise be deceived by their lies.  A good confession bears fruit whether we see it or not.  You never know.  But God who moves hearts is also the God who encourages weak hearts through the bold confessions of other Christians. 

Finally, the fourth and, I think, the greatest reason to argue theology is that Jesus did it. 

As our Gospel lesson begins this morning, we hear in passing that Jesus had already argued with the Sadducees and won.  When we look at why Jesus took part in these debates, we see why we should too.  He was not defending his pride.  He was not just trying to be right.  He was defending the word of God.  Specifically, he was defending the proper distinction between the law and the gospel. 

With the Sadducees, Jesus was defending the doctrine that God will raise the dead to life on the last day.  For the sake of time, I won’t get into the details.  But suffice it to say, the Pharisees were happy about it, because they also did not like the Sadducees. 

But it wasn’t because pure doctrine had triumphed over false doctrine.  That didn’t interest them as much as the fact that their enemies, the Sadducees, had tried to stump Jesus and failed.  But they could.  Or so they thought.  They relied on their superb knowledge of the law, and with their understanding of right and wrong, they thought they could best Jesus by luring him into a fruitless debate: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 

They wanted to know which law or rule would produce the greatest righteousness in man.  But that’s not the proper use of the law.  The law is to show us our sin, not help us become righteous.  The law is not a list of rules.  It is the righteousness that reflects God and that God demands of all whom he created in his image.  So Jesus kept things theological.  He summarized the law according to what Holy Scripture taught by saying what the law truly required above all: Love. 

“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.” 

This is the way it still is with many religious folks.  They appear to be our allies against those who deny the distinction between right and wrong.  They may even be political allies.  But then they present their moral purity as the remedy for our fallen and sinful world.  They talk about the Bible a lot, and even quote from it.  But their message is no more biblical than what the Pharisees pushed.  It’s called legalism.  And it is at its core a different religion than ours.  This is because they view the law as that by which we raise ourselves to God, rather than that which teaches us our need for God to lower himself down to us. 

By summarizing what the law required, Jesus also summarized what He came to fulfill.  “On these two commandments” Jesus said, “hang all the Law and the Prophets.”  The Scriptures that taught exactly what the law required of us are the same Scriptures that taught who would fulfill this condemning law in our place.  The Scriptures that taught how impossible it is for sinners to love as God requires are the same Scriptures that reveal God’s love in Christ.  That is why Jesus followed the Pharisee’s stunt with a test of his own.  He asked them about the promised Savior: “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” 

The Pharisees got the question half right.  “The son of David,” they responded.  That’s true.   But then Jesus followed with another question that they couldn’t answer.  Quoting the words of Psalm 110:1, Jesus said, “[If the Christ is David’s son,] how is it, then, that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet’?  If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 

The Pharisees fancied themselves experts in the law, but when it came to the Gospel they were satisfied with the minimal amount of knowledge.  David’s son? Sure.  David’s Lord?  Who knew?  Who cares?  They hadn’t bothered to take Jesus’ own advice to search the Scriptures in order to find salvation, because they thought that they had already found salvation in their own works.  Because the Pharisees were so woefully ignorant about what the law truly required, they were also woefully disinterested in what the Gospel taught.  They were ignorant of love. 

As for us, we are not so disinterested in what Jesus teaches us about the Gospel, because we know what the law teaches us about ourselves.  We know that what the law requires is a love that we have not produced.  Further, we know that it is a love that we need.  Because the immorality in the corrupt and dying world around us finds its source in the very sin that exists in each one of our hearts, and that manifests itself in our own thoughts, words, and actions.  You shall love God.  But then our sinful hearts love instead the things of this world that flatter us and falsely promise to fulfill our fleshly desires?   Or do we?  Do we gladly hear God’s word even when we have other plans?  Or do our other plans rate higher?  Do we hear false doctrine and get offended?  Do we defend the pure word of God by engaging those who speak falsely?  Or is it not worth the discomfort to hallow God’s name?  This is not loving God.  You shall love your neighbor.  But how do we serve our neighbor, when our own needs come first, and when we so often treat our parents, and our friends, and our enemies alike – merely as means to the end of serving ourselves?  And is it not the greatest love for another to speak the word of God to him and to defend the gospel to one who misunderstands it?  This is true love for others.  Yes we know what the law reveals in us.   It reveals our sin. 

David knew it too.  That is why he rejoiced to confess the Gospel that he learned from God and that he needed so dearly, as he sang by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “The Lord said unto my Lord,” that is, my God in heaven said to my God on earth, veiled in the very flesh and blood that He assumed in order to bear my sin away.  “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool.”   This is to say, win for David, and for his children and for all sinners in this wretched world, freedom from guilt and blame and from a bad conscience before the damning demands of the law.  Make their enemies Your enemies.  Make their sin Your sin.  Make their death your death, and conquer it as their God and brother by treading everything that separated man from God beneath Your feet!   Overcome sin, death, and the devil.  Do this, the Lord God said to our Lord Jesus, his Son.  Do this by fulfilling the law.  Do this by loving as We have required of our creation. 

Jesus teaches us the love of God by teaching us about His own Incarnation as the Son of God.  When we who have been properly instructed and duly crushed by the law that teaches us our need for divine mercy, then it is that we rejoice with David to sing of how divine love became human love when David’s Lord became David’s son in the Person of Jesus Christ.  The very love that the law required took on human flesh and blood in order to make us lovely, adorning us, by faith, with His own righteous obedience that He rendered to His Father in our place.  Jesus is true God, begotten of His Father from all eternity, and true Man, born of the Virgin Mary.  These are not just distant theological facts.  This is no dry doctrine.  It is what Scripture teaches us, and it is our life.  

He who finds this boring is the one who thinks that he can save himself by being as loving and good as he can.  He who knows that he lacks the love that God demands, finds this Good News to be the most interesting and wonderful thing.  It is the love of God toward us.  And by this love, we learn to love God and our neighbor in the same person, our God and Brother, Jesus Christ. 

The world remains sinful.  And we continue to find sin in our own lives as well.  Unbelief often seems to become more and more prevalent, and the vanishing moral integrity of our culture seems to follow swiftly behind its tragic rejection of the Gospel.  People need to be reminded of the distinction between right and wrong.  But for those of us who know it already, and mourn over our sins in repentance, we must never forget the distinction between the law and the gospel. 

Just as it was a sinful world that God once entered when He came to teach us what true love required, so it was a sinful world that God loved when He bore its sin away on the cross.  And so it is to a sinful world today filled with sinners like you and me that God continues even now to teach what true love has done for us.  “Greater love has no one than this, than that a man lay down his life for his friends.” 

Christ who came to serve us in all humility is our Lord God who laid down His life as a Man.  And this Lord rules our hearts even today not through the coercion and threats of the law, but through the full and free forgiveness of all our sins.  This is not David’s kingdom of earthly power.  It is God’s almighty kingdom of grace and mercy.  For He who died for us also rose from the dead for us.  And He continues today through His precious means of grace to share with us His victory, so that by faith in Him alone, we also may tread death and hell and all the enemies He conquered beneath our feet forever.  

This is the Gospel which we have learned and which we hear.  And through this alone God teaches us what true love is.  By teaching us to love the Gospel, God teaches us to love Him.  It is as we just sang from that beautiful hymn, “Lord Thee I love with all my heart.”  We can say this and mean it, not because of some power or determination in us to obey the law of love, but because God has purchased our dead and darkened hearts and won them back from fear, death and slavery.  And so through the Gospel alone our hearts are also freed to love one another.  This does not happen by figuring out the great law that will lead us right.  No, we fulfill the true spirit of the law completely and fully only through faith in the love of God in Christ who in loving us fulfilled it in our place. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.