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The Totality of Devotion: The Great Commandment and the Impossible Standard (Matthew 22:37–39) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reform Thinking. I am really looking forward to
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  this session because we are, we're taking a look at a passage
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  of scripture that I think most of us, well, we've heard it 1000
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  times. It's one of those texts that's
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  so familiar, you know, we might just skate right over the top of
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  it and miss the the sheer shock of what's actually happening in
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  that moment. Or in Matthew 22, verses 37
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  through 40, the great commandment.
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  Right. And it's a text that, you know,
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  it really stands at the absolute center of Christian ethics.
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  But like you said, that familiarity, it can breed a kind
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  of a deafness. We hear the words love God, love
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  neighbor, and we just sort of nod along.
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  We think, OK, got it. I understand the assignment.
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  But when you actually dig into the context, and I mean really
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  dig into the specific language Jesus is using here, you realize
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  this isn't good advice. It's a it's a devastating
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  standard. OK, so let's set the stage
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  because because the atmosphere is everything in this passage,
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  we have to realize where we are in the story.
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  This isn't Jesus sitting on a grassy hill with the disciples,
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  you know, having some quiet morning devotion.
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  No, not at all. This is Holy Week.
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  This is the final tense week of his life.
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  The pressure is just incredibly high.
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  The context is combat. It is.
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  It's conflict. I mean, think about what's just
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  happened. Jesus has entered Jerusalem on
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  Palm Sunday, acclaimed as the king.
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  He's gone straight into the temple and cleansed it.
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  He's overturned the tables of the money changers.
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  He has, for all intents and purposes, shut down the
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  financial engine of the entire religious establishment.
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  So the air is thick with hostility.
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  It's electric with it. So when these religious, those
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  leaders approach him, they are not coming to learn, they're not
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  disciples, they are hunting. They're hunting for ammunition.
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  That's a good way to put it. Our sources describe this whole
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  encounter as a kind of forensic strike.
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  I like that. They want to put him on the
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  witness stand, you know, cross examine him and trick him into
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  saying something, anything that will either get him arrested by
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  the Romans or worse, stoned by the Jews.
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  They're trying to trap him in a partisan debate.
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  And you have to remember the context of the 1st century here.
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  The Pharisees, the scribes, they, I mean they loved to argue
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  about the law. It was their favorite pastime.
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  It was. They'd identified 613 distinct
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  commandments in the Torah, and they spent countless hours
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  debating which ones were heavy. You know, the really essential
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  ones and which ones were light or less critical.
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  So they're trying to drag Jesus into this, this theological cage
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  match. Exactly.
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  They wanted to pick a side. It's kind of like asking a
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  politician today one of those gotcha questions, right, about a
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  super specific controversial policy, just hoping they'll slip
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  up and alienate half their base. That's a perfect analogy.
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  The question they ask sounds so innocent on the surface.
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  Teacher. Which is the great commandment
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  in the law? But it's loaded.
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  It's completely loaded. It's a trap with three exits,
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  and all of them are bad for Jesus.
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  Or so they think. OK, walk us through that.
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  What are the three bad exits? Well, think about it.
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  If Jesus picks a commandment about, say, ritual sacrifice,
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  one of the temple laws, they can immediately turn around and say,
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  see, he doesn't care about moral behavior, he's just a formalist.
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  If he picks a moral law, maybe one of the 10 commandments, they
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  can accuse him of being careless about the temple rituals which
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  were central to their life. They'd say he's disrespecting
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  the House of God. And what's the third option?
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  If he picks a controversial light law, something the Rabbi's
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  debated, they could just dismiss him entirely as a radical,
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  someone who doesn't understand the weight of the Torah.
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  So no matter what he picks, they've got him.
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  That's their plan. They're trying to expose him as
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  a heretic, A partisan or a fool. But before we even get to
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  Jesus's answer, which is just brilliant, we need to back up
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  just a little bit. Because this wasn't the first
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  person to take a swing at him that day, was it?
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  No, this was a coordinated, multi pronged attack.
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  The scholars call these the testing narratives.
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  It was a whole sequence of traps.
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  Who went first? First they sent the Herodians.
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  These were the political guys, the ones who were cozy with
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  Rome, and they came with the political trap.
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  The tax question. The tax question Is it lawful to
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  pay taxes to Caesar if he says don't pay, boom, he's a traitor
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  to Rome, an insurrectionist. And if he says pay?
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  Then he's a traitor to the Jewish people who are under
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  Roman occupation and despise the tax.
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  He'd be seen as a collaborator. And he just masterfully
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  sidesteps that with the render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and
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  to God what is God's lying. Which leaves them absolutely
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  speechless. They can't believe it.
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  So they regroup. Who's up next?
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  So then the Sadducees step up to the plate.
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  Now you have to understand who these guys were.
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  The Sadducees were the theological liberals of their
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  day. What does that mean in this
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  context? It means they didn't believe in
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  the supernatural. They denied the resurrection of
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  the dead Angel spirits, any of it.
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  They were the materialists. So they come with a theological
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  Riddle. A ridiculous one.
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  Yeah, This absurd hypothetical about a woman who marries seven
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  brothers in succession. And they ask, so in the
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  resurrection, whose wife will she be?
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  They're not actually curious about the answer.
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  Of course not. They're trying to make the very
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  idea of the resurrection, a core doctrine look absurd.
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  They're trying to mock it into. Oblivion and Jesus shuts them
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  down too. He does.
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  He basically tells them you don't know the scriptures and
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  you don't know the power of God. He corrects their bad theology
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  and their low view of God in one sentence.
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  And that right there is the setup for our text.
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  It is the perfect setup. Jesus has just silenced the
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  liberals, the Sadducees, So now the Pharisees, the theological
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  conservatives, the guys who prided themselves on their deep
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  knowledge of the text and their orthodoxy, they see an opening.
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  They smell blood in the water. They think, OK, he beat the
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  Sadducees on their own turf, but we are the real experts in the
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  law. Let's send in our best guy, our
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  top lawyer. So they tag in their champion, a
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  lawyer, an expert in the Torah, and he's the one who asks this
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  question about the greatest commandment.
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  You know, in a way they're kind of asking for the constitution
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  of the Kingdom of God. They want to know what the
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  single organizing principle is. And Jesus's response is just
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  it's incredible. He completely refuses to play
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  their game of legalistic calculus.
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  He does. He doesn't go to a specific
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  ritual. He doesn't even go to the 10
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  commandments, not directly. He goes to the very bedrock of
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  Israel's national and religious confession.
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  He quotes the Shema. From Deuteronomy 6 verse five,
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  you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with
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  all your soul, and with all your mind.
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  OK, let's really unpack this because love is a word we throw
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  around for everything. I love pizza.
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  I love my wife. I love a good book.
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  Right, it's a very broad, squishy word in English.
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  But when Jesus says love here, the Greek is very specific,
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  isn't it? It is.
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  He uses the word agapach, and the grammar is actually
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  fascinating. It's a future indicative verb
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  that's functioning as an imperative.
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  OK, break that down for us. It sounds technical, but it
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  basically means this isn't a suggestion.
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  It's not a friendly piece of advice.
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  It's a command with the force of an established reality.
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  This is how it will be. And this word agapach, it's
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  different from the other Greek word for love, fileti.
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  Very different. Filet is the word for affection,
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  for brotherly feeling, for friendship.
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  It's about how you feel. Agapash is about what you
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  choose. It's a love of the will.
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  So it's volitional. It is completely volitional.
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  It's a deciding love. It's about allegiance.
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  The command isn't asking you hey do you get warm fuzzy feelings
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  when you think about God? It's asking have you surrendered
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  your will, your entire being to his authority?
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  It's a command for total all-encompassing devotion.
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  And that totality is hammered home by the list that Jesus
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  gives heart, soul, and mind. Right.
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  Now, I know we often try to, you know, slice and dice these into
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  separate psychological compartments, like the heart is
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  emotion, the mind is intellect. And our sources suggest that's
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  probably not what Jesus is doing here.
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  He's using what we call totality language.
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  He's not giving us a diagram of the human psyche where you can
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  say, OK, check, my heart loves God, but my mind is kind of
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  doing its own thing today. So it's more like he's listing
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  every faculty to show that every faculty is included.
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  Exactly. He's saying every single part of
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  the human person must be consciously and actively
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  directed toward God. No part of you is exempt.
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  Let's break them down though, just for a minute, to see the
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  nuance. He starts with heart.
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  In our culture, the heart is the seed of emotions.
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  If I say follow your heart, I mean chase your feelings.
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  But that's not what a 1st century Jew would have heard.
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  Not at all. That's a very modern romantic
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  idea. In the biblical mind, the heart,
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  the cardia, is the command center of the person, the.
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  Command center. It's the seat of the will, the
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  intellect, your personality, your core being.
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  It's where you make decisions. It's the source of your desires
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  and intentions. So to love God with all your
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  heart means your core driving purpose.
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  Everything you want is aligned with His glory.
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  It's about what you choose, what you want at the deepest level.
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  Precisely. OK then he says soul.
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  The Greek word is psyche. Right.
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  And this is often understood as your life force, your breath,
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  your vitality, your very being. It implies A willingness to
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  expend your entire physical existence for God.
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  So it's loving God with your very life.
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  It's loving God with your very breath.
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  If it came down to a choice, you would be willing to lose your
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  life rather than deny Him. It's that total?
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  And then he adds the third one, which I think is so, so relevant
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  for our podcast, Reformed thinking, he says with all your
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  mind. This is where it gets really
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  interesting theologically, because if you go back to the
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  original Hebrew text of Deuteronomy, it actually says
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  with all your strength but Jesus.
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  Here, he's likely quoting the Septuagint, which is the Greek
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  translation of the Old Testament that was common in his day.
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  And that translation uses the word Dianoya, which means mind
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  or intellect. So he's intentionally
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  highlighting the mind. He's clarifying that your
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  intellect, your reason, your thought processes are an
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  essential arena of worship. Why is that addition or that
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  clarification so critical for us today?
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  Because we live in an age that is just rife with a kind of anti
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  intellectualism even within the. Church.
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  Oh yeah, you hear it all the time.
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  I don't need all that doctrine. I just need to love Jesus.
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  Exactly. Or theology is just deadhead
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  knowledge. It's not about the heart.
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  And Jesus is standing here saying that is an impossible
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  dichotomy. You cannot love a God you do not
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  know. That is a very strong statement.
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  You cannot love a God you do not know.
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  Well, think it through. If you don't know his character,
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  his attributes as revealed in scripture, his promises, his
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  requirements, who exactly are you loving?
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  You're loving an idea. You're loving a figment of your
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  own imagination. You're loving a God you've
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  created in your own head that looks a lot like you.
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  True love for the real God requires thinking his thoughts
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  after him. It demands study.
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  So lazy theology. Lazy theology is a direct
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  violation of the greatest commandment.
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  Wow. That hits heart.
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  So living God isn't about checking your brain at the
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  church door. No, it's about engaging your
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  intellect to its fullest capacity to understand the
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  magnificent, holy and complex being you are commanded to
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  worship. So the mind is a faculty of
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  worship. It absolutely is.
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  When we study the Westminster Standards, when we dig into the
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  Greek and Hebrew, when we read solid theology, we aren't just
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  doing some dry academic work. We are actively obeying the
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  command to love God with our minds.
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  OK, so we've established this vertical axis.
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  Love God with everything you have.
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  Real life intellect. It sounds beautiful.
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  I mean, it sounds like the perfect goal if it does.
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  But our sources take a pretty sharp turn right here.
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  They start talking about this as the first use of the law.
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  Yes, this is a key concept in reformed theology.
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  We talk about the law having three different functions or
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  uses. The first use of the law is to
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  function as a mirror. A mirror, It's primary job is to
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  show us our sin. It reflects back to us the
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  perfect standard of God, and in doing so reveals how far short
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  we fall. So I'm supposed to look at this
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  commandment? Love God with all your heart and
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  all your soul and all your mind. And what do I see in that
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  reflection? If you are being brutally honest
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  with yourself, you see a law breaker.
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  The word that kills us, the word that condemns us in that phrase
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  is the word all. It's not some of your heart.
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  It's not. Most of the time it's not Love
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  God more than you love football. It demands comprehensive, total,
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  unbroken devotion from the moment you're born to the moment
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  you die. And I think I mean, if we're all
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  honest with ourselves, even on our very best days, our motives
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  are mixed. Always we're.
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  Distracted. We're self-centered.
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  We might do the right thing, but for the wrong reason.
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  Our sources use a specific theological term for our natural
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  state. By nature, since the fall of
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  Adam, we are philetoy, which means lovers of self.
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  That's our default setting. We are not by nature Philippi
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  lovers of God. We love our comfort, we love our
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  reputation, we love our own autonomy.
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  We love being in control. And so this commandment comes in
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  like a laser guided forensic tool to expose our total
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  depravity. So the lawyer asks what's the
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  greatest commandment hoping to trap Jesus, And Jesus gives an
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  answer that in effect condemns every single person listening.
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  Including the lawyer. Including us.
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  Absolutely, and that's the point.
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  This commandment is a death sentence for the self-righteous.
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  If you think you can earn your way to heaven by keeping the
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  law, Jesus just set the bar at a height that no mere human can
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  ever clear. I mean, who has kept this for a
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  single hour? No one, not for a minute, not
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  for a single second, has any fallen human loved God with all
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  their heart, soul and mind. This is where the impossible
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  standard part of our episode title really comes into focus.
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  It is. If this is the requirement for
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  eternal life, perfect, unbroken, all-encompassing love, then we
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  are all in very serious trouble. We're undone.
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  We are undone. We stand rightfully condemned
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  before a holy God. But this is the genius of it.
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  This is where the law becomes the servant of the Gospel.
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  How so? The law has to crush our
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  self-confidence. It has to demolish any hope we
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  have of saving ourselves so that we finally, desperately look
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  outside of ourselves for a Savior.
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  And this is where that specifically Reformed
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  understanding of Christ's work is so helpful.
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  It's not just that he died for our sins.
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  Right. It's not just what theologians
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  call his passive obedience, His suffering and death on the cross
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  to pay the penalty for our sin. There's more.
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  There is. There's his active obedience.
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  This is an absolutely crucial theological concept.
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  Explain that for us. The active obedience of Christ
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  is the reality that for his entire 33 years on earth, Jesus
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  Christ is the only human being, whoever lived, who actually kept
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  the great commandment perfectly. Every second.
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  Every second of every day he loved the Father with all his
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  heart, all his soul and all his mind, without failure, without
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  wavering, without any mixed motives.
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  So he fulfilled the covenant of works where Adam failed.
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  And where every single one of us fails every single day and.
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  The glory of the gospel is. Imputation, the great exchange
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  when we place our faith in Christ, His perfect record of
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  loving God, His perfect righteousness, is credited to
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  our account. So when the Father looks at us,
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  he doesn't see our fractured, half hearted, distracted love.
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  No, he sees the perfect, wholehearted, comprehensive
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  devotion of his son. That just changes everything.
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  It means I don't wake up in the morning trying to love God so
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  that He will accept me. I wake up knowing I'm already
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  accepted in Christ because of Christ's perfect love, and now I
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  get to love God in response. You've got it.
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  The crushing pressure of earning salvation is gone.
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  Now love becomes a joyful response of gratitude, not a
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  wage we're desperately trying to earn to pay off a debt.
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  OK, so that covers the vertical axis, the God word command.
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  But Jesus doesn't stop there, does he?
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  He immediately pivots. He does, he says, and a second
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  is like it. You shall love your neighbor as
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  yourself. And that little phrase is like
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  it. That's the hinge, isn't it?
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  That is the whole hinge. The Greek word is hamoya.
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  It means similar to or resembling or of the same kind.
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  Jesus is welding these two commandments together.
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  You can't separate them. You cannot have one without the
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  other. You cannot claim to have a
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  legitimate vertical relationship with God that does not produce a
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  tangible horizontal relationship with your neighbor.
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  It immediately makes me think of first John 4.20.
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  If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar.
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  It's so blunt, isn't it? There's no wiggle room there.
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  The vertical love for God is the root system deep in the soil.
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  The horizontal love for neighbor is the fruit that grows on the
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  tree. And if there's no fruit?
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  There's no root. It's that simple.
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  If you claim to have this high, mystical, deep love for God, but
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  you are cruel or indifferent or harsh to the people around you,
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  your claim is false. OK, let's talk about that word
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  neighbor, because the lawyer asking the question and the
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  Pharisees in general, they had a very specific, very narrow
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  definition of who their neighbor was.
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  Oh, absolutely. They looked at Leviticus 19.18
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  which is the verse Jesus is quoting, and they drew a very
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  small circle around it. Who was in the circle?
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  My neighbor is my fellow Jew. My neighbor is someone in my
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  particular sect who keeps the law the way I do.
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  My neighbor is someone who is ceremonially clean and
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  politically aligned with me. But Jesus just blows that
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  definition to pieces. He completely destroys it, and
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  we see this most clearly, of course, in the parable of the
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  Good Samaritan, which he tells in response to the very same
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  question. Jesus expands the definition of
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  neighbor to include anyone, anyone that God in his
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  Providence places in your path. It's not just the person you
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  like. No, it's not just the person who
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  votes like you, or looks like you, or lives in your
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  subdivision. It is the person right in front
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  of you who has a need, even if especially if they're your
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  enemy. And then comes the standard.
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  This is the part that I think gets so twisted today.
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  Love your neighbor as yourself. I have heard so many sermons and
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  read so many books that teach this in a way that says, well
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  you see the real problem is you don't love yourself enough.
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  You need to build up your self esteem, learn self love and then
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  you'll be able to love others. That is an incredibly common
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  modern reading. It's essentially a form of
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  therapeutic deism, but it's a complete misreading of the text
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  and, frankly, of basic biblical anthropology.
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  Because the Bible doesn't teach there are problems that we hate
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  ourselves. Not at all.
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  The Bible teaches the exact opposite.
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  Ephesians 5.29 says For Noah ever hated his own flesh, but
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  nourishes and cherishes it. It's our factory setting.
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  It is our factory setting. Even a person who struggles with
• 18:47
  what we call low self esteem is still fundamentally self
• 18:50
  obsessed. They're obsessed with how they
• 18:52
  look, how they're perceived, their own pain, their own
• 18:55
  feelings. We are by nature completely self
• 18:59
  absorbed creatures. So.
• 19:00
  Jesus is leveraging that innate selfishness.
• 19:02
  He's turning it on its head. He's saying, you know that
• 19:06
  intense, all consuming concern you have for your own
• 19:10
  well-being. You know how much you care about
• 19:12
  your own comfort, your own hunger, your own reputation.
• 19:16
  You know how quickly you defend yourself when you feel attacked.
• 19:19
  You know how you instinctively provide for your own needs.
• 19:22
  Do that for your neighbor. Take that same intensity, that
• 19:25
  same urgency, that same consistent moment by moment care
• 19:28
  that you instinctively give to yourself and turn it outward.
• 19:31
  Seek your neighbor's good with the same ferocity that you
• 19:33
  naturally seek your own. So this is not a command to
• 19:36
  boost the ego, it's a command to crucify the ego.
• 19:40
  It is the death of selfishness. It's saying I am going to treat
• 19:44
  your needs, your hurts, your reputation and your well-being
• 19:47
  with the same level of importance that I instinctively
• 19:50
  give to my own. That is incredibly practical and
• 19:53
  it is incredibly difficult. Impossible apart from grace.
• 19:56
  Because it's easy to love humanity in the abstract, right?
• 19:59
  Yeah, it's really hard to love the specific neighbor who leaves
• 20:03
  their. Your trash cans out all week.
• 20:04
  Or the guy who cuts you off in traffic.
• 20:07
  Or the family member who knows exactly which buttons to push.
• 20:09
  Or the person in the Pew next to you at church who has political
• 20:13
  views that you find absolutely abhorrent.
• 20:16
  That is the neighbor. And just like the first
• 20:18
  commandment, the second one functions as a mirror.
• 20:22
  It exposes us. Who among us has ever
• 20:24
  consistently loved their neighbor as they love
• 20:26
  themselves? I certainly haven't.
• 20:28
  So once again, the law drives us back to Christ.
• 20:31
  It has to. He is the only one who truly
• 20:33
  loved his neighbors, us, his enemies, more than he loved
• 20:37
  himself. He emptied himself for our sake.
• 20:40
  He's the Good Samaritan in the story.
• 20:42
  He is we are the ones beaten and half dead in the ditch of our
• 20:45
  sin, and He is the one who stops at great personal cost to
• 20:49
  Himself to bind up our wounds and save us.
• 20:52
  Now Jesus wraps this whole exchange up in verse 40 with a
• 20:56
  statement that really pulls the entire Old Testament together.
• 21:00
  He says on these two commandments hang all the law
• 21:04
  and the prophets. The visual metaphor he uses here
• 21:07
  is just so striking. The Greek word is cremantai.
• 21:10
  It literally means to hang or to be suspended.
• 21:13
  Like a picture hanging on a hook.
• 21:15
  Exactly. Or picture a heavy door hanging
• 21:17
  on its hinges. The hinges are small, but they
• 21:19
  bear the weight of the entire door.
• 21:21
  You take the hook of the hinges away, the whole thing just falls
• 21:23
  to the floor. Right.
• 21:24
  Jesus is saying that without these two core principles, love
• 21:28
  God, love neighbor. The entire Old Testament,
• 21:30
  Revelation, all 613 laws, all the history, all the prophecies,
• 21:36
  it all just collapses into a meaningless, disconnected pile
• 21:39
  of rules. So this is the hermeneutical
• 21:40
  key. This is how we are supposed to
• 21:42
  read and interpret the whole Bible.
• 21:44
  This is the interpretive key. Every single ritual in
• 21:48
  Leviticus, every sermon in the book of Isaiah, every story of
• 21:52
  the Kings and Chronicles, it is all ultimately aiming at this
• 21:56
  one goal, creating a people who love God with their whole being
• 22:02
  and love their neighbor as themselves.
• 22:04
  It seems like this framework prevents us from falling into
• 22:06
  two major ditches that people always fall into.
• 22:09
  It does. On one side you've got legalism.
• 22:13
  All rules, but no love. Right, checking boxes, but with
• 22:16
  a cold heart. And on the other side you have
• 22:19
  antinomianism, which is a kind of vague love but with no rules.
• 22:22
  And Jesus's statement here holds those two in perfect tension.
• 22:25
  He says the law and the prophets hang on love.
• 22:28
  They aren't replaced by love or erased by love.
• 22:30
  They are fulfilled and given their proper meaning by love.
• 22:33
  Let's dig into those misreadings a little more, because I think
• 22:35
  this is where the rubber really meets the road for a lot of us
• 22:38
  today. Good idea.
• 22:39
  Our outline for this deep dive mentions sentimental
• 22:41
  antinomianism. That's a mouthful, but I think I
• 22:44
  know what it means. It's a fancy term for a very,
• 22:47
  very common problem in the modern church.
• 22:50
  It's the idea that love is just a warm feeling or a blanket
• 22:53
  affirmation of whatever someone wants to do.
• 22:56
  You hear it all the time. Well, Jesus just said we should
• 22:59
  love people, so we shouldn't judge anyone's behavior.
• 23:01
  The whole love is love mantra, right?
• 23:02
  Right. But biblically love is not a
• 23:05
  sentiment. Love is covenantal fidelity.
• 23:08
  It is defined by God's revealed law.
• 23:12
  You cannot claim you are loving your neighbor while
• 23:14
  simultaneously encouraging them or helping them to sin against
• 23:18
  God. Because that's not actually for
• 23:20
  their good. It's enabling their destruction.
• 23:21
  That isn't love, that's malpractice.
• 23:24
  Remember, the second commandment is like the first, not instead
• 23:27
  of the 1st. So true love for our neighbor
• 23:29
  has to be shaped and informed by the truth of God.
• 23:32
  I can't love my neighbor by lying to them or by telling them
• 23:36
  that something God clearly calls sin is actually good for them.
• 23:39
  Correct. Love provides the powerful
• 23:41
  motive, but the law, God's revealed will, provides the
• 23:45
  definition and the necessary boundaries for what loving
• 23:48
  action actually looks like. OK, so that's one ditch.
• 23:51
  Then there's the other one, Legalism.
• 23:53
  We've touched on this, but it's the error of treating this
• 23:56
  commandment as a ladder to earn God's favor.
• 23:59
  This is the default mode of the fallen human heart.
• 24:02
  It's religion. We want to earn, our keep.
• 24:04
  We want to be able to present our spiritual resume to God and
• 24:07
  say, look at how well I've done. But Jesus's command makes that
• 24:10
  impossible. The word all, all your heart,
• 24:13
  all your soul, all your mind. It takes a saw and cuts off the
• 24:18
  bottom rungs of that ladder. It makes it completely
• 24:20
  impossible to climb. And if we try to climb it
• 24:22
  anyway, one of two things happens.
• 24:24
  What's that? We either become arrogant,
• 24:27
  self-righteous Pharisees because we delude ourselves into
• 24:30
  thinking we're actually succeeding, or we collapse into
• 24:33
  despair and self hatred because we know we're failing miserably.
• 24:36
  And neither of those is the gospel.
• 24:38
  Arrogance and despair are two sides of the same self focused
• 24:42
  coin. There's another trap that our
• 24:44
  sources mentioned that I think is really subtle.
• 24:45
  It's called privatized piety. This seems to be a big one for
• 24:49
  people frankly like us, people who love theology.
• 24:53
  Yes, this is a very real danger for the intellectually inclined.
• 24:58
  This is the person who can claim to have a deep, substantial,
• 25:02
  private relationship with God. They do their quiet time every
• 25:05
  day. They read the Puritans.
• 25:07
  They can defend the five points of Calvinism.
• 25:09
  Florida State. Their doctrine is perfect, but
• 25:13
  they're harsh and short tempered with their spouse.
• 25:16
  They ignore the needs of the poor in their community.
• 25:19
  They're arrogant and dismissive in online debates.
• 25:22
  They seem to love the idea of God, but they don't seem to care
• 25:25
  much for the people God made in his image.
• 25:27
  And Jesus will not allow that separation, he says.
• 25:30
  The second command is like the first If you're supposed
• 25:32
  vertical love for God doesn't flow out horizontally into
• 25:35
  tangible, patient, kind love for people.
• 25:37
  It's a stagnant pool. It's not the living water Jesus
• 25:40
  talks about. And then there's the flip side
• 25:42
  of that coin, which the outline calls horizontal humanism, or,
• 25:46
  more commonly, the social gospel.
• 25:48
  Right. This is the error of
• 25:49
  prioritizing neighbor love while completely discarding doctrinal
• 25:53
  truth and the worship of God. It's trying to do the works of
• 25:56
  the Kingdom without acknowledging the King.
• 25:58
  You see this when churches basically become social service
• 26:01
  agencies. Exactly.
• 26:02
  They run a great food pantry, they do wonderful community
• 26:05
  outreach, but they stop preaching repentance, faith in
• 26:09
  Christ, and the atonement for sin.
• 26:11
  It's all about being a good person without any name for a
• 26:14
  savior. And ultimately that fails even
• 26:17
  on its own terms, because without the vertical anchor in
• 26:19
  God's truth, you lose the very definition of what is truly good
• 26:24
  for your neighbor. You just end up affirming them
• 26:26
  and whatever they want rather than seeking their actual
• 26:28
  eternal good. So OK, we've walked through the
• 26:33
  text, we've seen the trap, we felt the weight of the
• 26:36
  impossible standard, and we've seen our absolute need for
• 26:39
  Christ's perfect obedience. Now let's try to land the plane
• 26:43
  here with some direct application.
• 26:45
  Our sources bring up the third use of the law.
• 26:48
  Right. So we talked about the first use
• 26:49
  the law as a mirror that exposes our sin and drives us to Christ.
• 26:52
  Yeah. The third use of the law is the
• 26:54
  law as a guide for the believer. Now that we are saved by grace,
• 26:58
  now that we are justified and accepted in Christ, how are we
• 27:01
  supposed to live? We look to the law.
• 27:03
  We look to the law not to get saved, but as a beautiful guide
• 27:06
  for how to please the One who saved us.
• 27:08
  It's a family rule book for God's adopted children.
• 27:11
  So let's run a couple of diagnostics based on this text
• 27:14
  for our listeners who love reform thinking, the
• 27:17
  intellectuals, the theology nerds out there.
• 27:19
  What's the specific warning from this passage for them?
• 27:23
  The warning is clear and it's sharp.
• 27:25
  Do not love the system more than the Savior.
• 27:28
  It is so easy, especially for those of us with a certain kind
• 27:31
  of mind, to fall in love with the beautiful architecture of
• 27:34
  Reformed theology, the logic, the coherence, the history, and
• 27:38
  to forget that the entire system is meant to be a signpost
• 27:41
  pointing to a person. Does your theology terminate in
• 27:45
  doxology? That is the ultimate question.
• 27:48
  Does your deep study of the attributes of God make you weep
• 27:51
  over your own sin, or does it make you want to sing louder on
• 27:53
  Sunday morning? Does it make you more patient
• 27:56
  and gentle with a new believer who knows less than?
• 27:58
  Because if it doesn't. If all your knowledge just puffs
• 28:01
  you up and makes you arrogant, then you are violating the
• 28:04
  greatest commandment with the very mind you think you're using
• 28:06
  to honor God. Wow.
• 28:08
  OK, So what about the other person?
• 28:10
  What about the activist? The person who's out there
• 28:12
  serving constantly, running the food pantry, fighting for social
• 28:15
  justice, But they're just, they're burning out.
• 28:18
  For that person, the warning is you cannot pour out from an
• 28:22
  empty cup. You cannot sustain horizontal
• 28:24
  love without being filled by vertical strength.
• 28:27
  The order matters. The order is everything.
• 28:30
  If you start skipping corporate worship, if you neglect the Word
• 28:33
  in prayer because you're too busy serving Jesus, you will
• 28:36
  eventually dry up. You'll become bitter or cynical,
• 28:39
  or you'll just quit. You have to constantly return to
• 28:41
  the means of grace. Vertical first, then horizontal.
• 28:44
  That is the non negotiable order of operations for the Christian
• 28:47
  life. Your service has to flow from
• 28:49
  your worship. Let's get really, really
• 28:51
  practical with this neighbor stuff as we close our sources
• 28:54
  point out. And it's so true that the
• 28:56
  nearest neighbors are often the hardest ones to love.
• 28:59
  It is the great irony of home life, isn't it?
• 29:01
  You can be a paragon of virtue at church or at work, and an
• 29:05
  absolute terror at the dinner table.
• 29:07
  Your spouse and your children, they see the real you.
• 29:09
  They do, and loving them as yourself means dying daily to
• 29:14
  your need to be right in an argument.
• 29:16
  Dying to your need for quiet when the kids are loud.
• 29:19
  Dying to your knee for control, impatience and harshness with
• 29:23
  your own family is a direct failure to love your nearest
• 29:26
  neighbor. And then there's our speech.
• 29:28
  I mean, we live in an era of constant hot takes and online
• 29:32
  outrage. Sarcasm, gossip, slander, the
• 29:35
  snarky comment online, these are all violations of the second
• 29:39
  commandment. When you tear someone down, even
• 29:41
  with a witty comment to make yourself look smarter,
• 29:43
  righteous, you are nourishing your own flesh at their expense.
• 29:47
  You're living yourself, not them.
• 29:48
  Exactly. You are not loving them as
• 29:50
  yourself. And finally, the hardest one of
• 29:52
  all enemies, the person who cannot or will not repay your
• 29:56
  kindness. That is the ultimate acid test
• 29:58
  of genuine spirit wrought love. It's easy to love people who
• 30:01
  love you back. Anybody can do that.
• 30:03
  But Jesus calls us to love the one who opposes us, the one who
• 30:06
  has hurt us. And that doesn't mean we have to
• 30:08
  feel warm and fuzzy about them. No, it's not about feelings.
• 30:11
  It means we actively seek their good.
• 30:13
  We pray for their salvation. We refuse to retaliate or seek
• 30:17
  revenge. We speak truthfully but gently.
• 30:19
  That is supernatural love. That is the clearest evidence
• 30:24
  that the Spirit of God is at work in a human heart.
• 30:26
  It all just keeps coming back to the gospel, doesn't it?
• 30:28
  It has to because if you and I and everyone listening, just
• 30:32
  leave this deep dive thinking, OK, I need to try harder to love
• 30:35
  God and love people. We've missed the entire point.
• 30:38
  We'll just fail again. We will fail.
• 30:40
  We have to start with the glorious fact that Christ obeyed
• 30:43
  this law perfectly for us. He is the greater Savior.
• 30:47
  He loved God with all his heart. He loved his neighbors as
• 30:50
  himself, and he did it all the way to the cross.
• 30:53
  And now, because we are justified, because we are united
• 30:55
  to Him, the Holy Spirit begins to write this very law on our
• 30:59
  hearts. We don't love to try and get
• 31:01
  God's attention or earn His favor.
• 31:03
  We love because he first loved. Us, That's the fuel.
• 31:06
  That is the only possible motivation that can sustain this
• 31:09
  kind of life. It is the gospel frees us to try
• 31:13
  and to fail and to repent and to get back up and keep growing in
• 31:16
  love, all without the fear of condemnation.
• 31:20
  Amen. Well, this has been a very deep
• 31:23
  dive into just 4 short verses, but man, they are heavy, life
• 31:27
  altering verses they are. As we wrap up, I want to leave
• 31:29
  our listeners with that provocative thought.
• 31:31
  Our sources suggested it's a question to just carry with you
• 31:34
  this week, to let it sit with you.
• 31:36
  It's a question that haunts me in a good way.
• 31:39
  Here it is. If your love for your neighbor
• 31:42
  was the only evidence that could be presented in a courtroom to
• 31:45
  prove your love for God, what would the verdict be on your
• 31:48
  life today? That's a question worth sitting
• 31:50
  with in silence. Thanks for listening to Reformed
• 31:52
  Thinking. We'll see you next time on the
• 31:54
  Deep Dive.