JESUS IS THE ANSWER TO THE LAW
Prayer: Dear Lord, we know that Your Law is good; but since the Fall its holiness condemns us all, it dooms us for our sin to die, and has no power to justify. By Your Holy Spirit, help us to so use the Law that to Jesus we for refuge flee, who from the curse has set us free, and humbly worship at Your throne, saved by Your grace through faith alone. Amen! (Matthias Loy, ELH #492, CW93 #289)
Sermon Text, St. Matthew 22:34-46 (v. 34b). Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your Words. Purify our hearts by the truth. Your Word is truth. Lead us in Your truth – Law and Gospel – to life eternal. Amen.
Dear people loved by God in Christ: Grace and peace to you from God the Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The sermons that we hear in church are Law-Gospel sermons. This is what Jesus said His church was to do until He returns: in His words, “that repentance and remission of sins be preached in His name to all nations” (Lk 24:47). St. Paul instructed young pastor Timothy – in his divinely inspired words of 2 Timothy 2:15 – that he was to “rightly divide the word of truth.”
It isn’t only important for sermons. This is all about the conscience. That’s where all the action takes place spiritually. If you have a troubled conscience, feeling accusations and shame, it’s the voice of the Law you’re hearing. The only thing that can quiet the conscience and give you peace is the Gospel. So beyond sermons, this is the heart of all pastoral care. But also each Christian in daily life has this conscience struggle and needs to know how to battle what is going on in the conscience by properly using the Law and the Gospel.
Today we hear Jesus teach the Law and then teach the Gospel. This took place as He taught in the temple during Holy Week. It would figure that this discussion would happen right on the doorstep of the cross – where all sin would be punished and He would win salvation, the greatest good news.
The Pharisees come to Jesus with this question about the Law. They had counted up 348 positive commands and 265 negative prohibitions, to come up with a total of 613 laws. They asked a supposedly unanswerable question: “Which is the great” one – the greatest – out of 613? They thought they knew a lot about this. When the gospels say one of them was “an expert in the law,”it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It reflects that this is what the Pharisees and scribes considered themselves; so the common people (Jesus’ disciples too) thought this way: “They’re the experts who really know God’s Law.”
The Pharisees didn’t accept Jesus as a rabbi (teacher) they would respect. When they asked this question, they were looking down on Him, “testing Him” it says, trying to stump Him. They came with hatred in their hearts, using the Law to try and defeat Him, discredit Him, get Him out of the way.
But what we see in this story is that they did not understand the Law – or the Gospel. Jesus reveals here that they didn’t know or understand the Law at all. Then He shows what’s worse, that they did not know the Gospel. The Gospel isn’t only in the New Testament; there’s Gospel in the Old Testament too, all the beautiful promises of Christ. So they didn’t understand Scripture.
So what’s Jesus answer to them? How is Jesus the answer to the Law?
First He says what they agree with: “ ‘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.” He was quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, a verse they knew by heart. Of course, they would reply that they do love God. Then He says, “The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
This makes sense to us too. These two commands sum up the Ten Commandments: “Love God” summarizing the first three, and “Love your neighbor,” the last seven. But see what Jesus is doing, in the words: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In John’s Gospel and in 1 John this is called the “new command,” to love one another. This is harder. This is where people see your love for God: how you show it to others. To whom were the Pharisees not showing love at that moment? To Jesus. They hated Him. To people hating their fellow man – Jesus – He says: “You shall love.”
Jesus reveals that the Law is not on its own. The Law is about love. Love is God’s nature. The Law is in harmony with God’s nature. So then it ends up showing how out of harmony you are with God’s nature. God’s Law makes you ask: “Have I been loving God with all my heart? Have I shown this in how I feel about others and act toward them, how patient and considerate I am?”
It’s true the Law is also for guiding us to live according to God’s will; but while it tells you what to do it has no power to help you do it. So because of our sinful nature, what ends up being the chief function of the Law is that it’s a mirror in which you see yourself as you really are. It’s always acting on the conscience. I want to love God with all my heart, but do I? I think I’m loving and kind to others, but am I really? My actions show that I don’t do the good I want to do, and I do the things I don’t want to do.
The Law prevents love from being generic and non-specific. Instead of letting you get away with thinking that you just love mankind, the Ten Commandments give you ways to honor God in the right time and in the right way, they lay upon you specific things to do for specific people – not just those you choose. To have to help a person who’s rude to you, to honor a government leader you dislike, to defend those who do dumb things, whom everyone else is critical of. To speak well of a person who acts foolishly.
So when you examine your life in the bright mirror of the Law, it can only show you a failure to love. This is why our Lutheran Confessions repeat over and over: “the Law always accuses.” If love is God’s nature, then we’re far from God and His true nature. This should make you uncomfortable. But more than that, it should lead you to see your sins and be filled with an urgent need to get rid of them, so that you stop being accused in your conscience, so you can have peace in your conscience.
But the good news is that this whole part of the question – the question of the Law – is asked of Jesus. The question does not make Jesus uncomfortable. Why? First, because He was busy fulfilling the Law, perfectly and completely obeying it to count for all people. This is how He gives us His innocence and righteousness. But also, this question doesn’t make Jesus uncomfortable since He’s about providing comfort for guilty sinners. He’s about the Gospel.
It’s what His question is about: “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” He goes on: “How 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 calls Him Lord, how is He David’s Son?”
What’s all this about “David’s Son and David’s Lord?” And how does it answer the accusations in your conscience and put your conscience at peace?
Jesus is quoting Psalm 110, a psalm written by David. It’s also a prophecy of Christ and His ascension. God the Father says to His Son: “Sit at My right hand,” just as we say in the creed, He’s “seated at the right hand of the Father.”
You have to realize what it means that Jesus is seated at God’s right hand. It’s after He was punished for all the sin of the world, after He died on the cross, after He rose from the dead – which is the sign that all sins are forgiven, died for. As we hear these words that He is at God’s right hand, it means the accusations of the Law – that you are guilty and have to answer for your sins – aren’t true. What’s true is that you are forgiven in Christ. This is the Gospel.
So when the devil accuses you, it’s a lie, because of Christ. Your sins don’t condemn you anymore. If He’s enthroned, so are you who believe in Him. He has a crown, but you’ll have a crown. His victory over the devil is your victory over the devil! His victory over death: your victory over death!
But not only does Jesus speak about this. He wants us to pause to consider: Who is He? He says (to us too): “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” Who is the Christ who accomplishes this? First, it was clear that He would be the Son of David, descended from David. Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, born in Bethlehem; He is true Man. But because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, He’s still true God. He wasn’t only the Son of David, David’s human descendant, but also the Lord God of David. David calls Him “my Lord.” Jesus made this clear by His miracles.
What does this mean, that He is true God and true Man in one Person? It means He’s the only Savior. He had to be true man to take our place and die for everyone. He had to be true God in order to accomplish this. It’s all about the fact that He is the Savior and He’s won your salvation. That’s the Gospel. Whereas the Law says what you are to do, the Gospel says nothing of what you are to do, only what God has done – and still does – to save you.
Who Jesus is, and what He did, is the fact and it’s the truth. But included in the word Gospel is that its essence is that it’s proclaimed to you. It’s the good news. The Gospel takes the form of His Word and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in which forgiveness is given, and faith is given.
The fact that Jesus is the Savior, and won salvation, only helps you if you believe it. If He is the answer to the Law that condemns you – and He is! – then His intent is to actually answer it, for His words of forgiveness, the Gospel, to be spoken powerfully to you – to your conscience – to silence the accusations and to give you faith that you’re forgiven.
Jesus is the answer to the Law in His Person – who He is – and in His work – what He’s done for you. It’s not that you didn’t do the sins; you did. It’s not that the Law doesn’t condemn what you did; it does. But the Gospel – what Jesus has done for you – takes away all the guilt, it removes the sins as evidence against you. The sins are “let go” – released from you so they’re not on you and won’t be ever again! The Gospel – God’s word about what Jesus did for you – silences the Law – God’s word about what you’ve done against God.
It produces this mystery – we can’t fully comprehend it – that God, who sees all, now can’t see the sins. Psalm 32 says your “sin is covered.” Micah 7 says your sins are cast into the depths of the ocean. In the catechism we learn that God forgiving is God not looking upon our sins but looking at Jesus and His blood as He considers you. The Gospel says of your sin: God can’t see it!
Our problem is that we still see our sins, can’t forget them, you see them reappearing in your mind’s eye, in your conscience. This is why the Gospel is spoken to you. Because, as Luther says, the Law is a constant companion in our conscience, our sins are always being brought back up by the devil who is our accuser, we need so much Gospel. We need to hear it so much. The plain truth is that in the struggle between our old nature, the sinful self, and our new nature, our forgiven self, often our sinful self is stronger, our forgiven self is weaker. We just don’t hold onto the Gospel very firmly, we don’t keep it, it’s like it flies away so quickly, and we struggle to have a good conscience.
So what you need is just to hear the Gospel more and more. For God to keep having it spoken to you. That’s why it’s so good to be in Jesus’ church. It is what His church is for: to forgive sins, to speak the Gospel, to bring Jesus to you and you to Jesus. He is the answer to the Law. He silences the accusations of the Law. He puts His Gospel, His forgiveness, into you. He gives you “a conscience free from blame, a soul unhurt by sin” (ELH #470 v. 1). It’s so true: we live by the Gospel, and we can’t live without it. Amen!