A generation or two before Jesus was born, two schools of thought had developed within the Pharisees: the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai. Rabbi Hillel grappled to get to the spirit of the Law. Rabbi Shammai was a grouch and just wanted to get the crux of something and told it like it was.
A Gentile once came to Rabbi Shammai and asked him, “Teach me the whole Law.” But the Gentile tacked on this condition: “Do this while I’m standing on one foot.” Living up to his short-tempered reputation, Rabbi Shammai grabbed his walking stick and struck the young man.
So, the man then went to see Rabbi Hillel. Hillel was different. He said to that man: “What is hateful to you, to your neighbor don’t do. That’s the entire Torah. Everything else is commentary. Go and study.”
Hillel was right. At its core, the Law is simple, uncomplicated. You can learn it while you stand on one foot. “What is hateful to you, to your neighbor don’t do.” The Apostle Paul agrees. He says the entire Law is “summed up by this: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Romans 13:9).
And Jesus echoes them both, adding love toward God:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. That’s the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
But even Jesus’ summary of the Law is not an appealing picture. Cain vented his anger at God by making the earth red with his brother’s blood. Rape-hungry Sodomites tried to indulge their lust on Lot’s two out-of-town visitors. Bellyaching Israelites got queasy with God’s food as they wandered in the wilderness, even wanting to stone Moses. King David got Bathsheba pregnant and then murdered her husband.
When God’s Word speaks, down in the pit of our being, we often wish that God would stay silent. For we often don’t like what He has to say. After all, my word makes me feel better than God’s Word does. My sinful flesh likes the scripture that it creates: “If it feels good, do it. If I like it, that’s what matters. What’s right for you may not be right for me. After all, everything is relative.” Is that what God says?
Then there’s my neighbor. The sinful flesh at its worst screams out, “Who cares about my neighbor? If he wants anything, he can fend for himself. He got himself into that mess; he can get himself out of it.” Doesn’t Scripture say, “If anyone isn’t willing to work, he shouldn’t eat”? (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
Instead of love, we want payback. Instead of service, there’s “what comes around goes around.” Instead of an attitude of service, there is only the attitude. Week in and week out, we hear Jesus’ message of love and what He did and does to save us. But our hearts are unchanged, still selfish as ever.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just watch a few TV commercials. “You deserve it.” “You like beautiful things.” “I’m worth it.” Advertisers have paid to say that message for many years—all to make money. So, it must be effective, in some way.
“I’m worth it.” That also was the brashness of the Pharisees. They paraded around as if they owned the world. They lay in wait for Jesus, ready to leap when they could make Him look bad or trap Him because He called out their sins.
But the correction wasn’t theirs to give. It was our Lord Jesus who was to do the correcting. He was God; they weren’t. He knew how they had gone astray; they didn’t, not really. He had the words of eternal life; they didn’t. And it’s no different for us.
What then can we say? When Jesus corrected the Pharisees, He also corrects us. All we can say is, “Lord, have mercy.” What more is there to say? If the Law says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” then we lawbreakers can only cry out, “Lord, have mercy.”
Why say, “Please God, give me another chance and I’ll… But God, I didn’t mean to… O Lord, I’ll make it up to You by…”? Those statements will only show that we are liars. If we didn’t mean to do it, then why did we do it? How can we make it up to God? If God gives us another chance, how will we not mess that up, as well?
That’s why we say the Kyrie, “Lord, have mercy,” every Sunday. For there’s never a time when those words don’t describe what we always need. We always need our Lord’s mercy. And so the liturgy teaches us this truth, even when we find those words boring, even when we’d rather be saying something else. But here’s where it gets good: Our Lord wants to shower us with His mercy. That’s His greatest delight.
Ancient Jewish tradition has this story. When the Egyptian Army was drowning in the Red Sea, and God was rescuing His people from their slavery and bondage, the heavenly choirs burst out in song. But the Lord said, “Silence! My hands are drowning the foe, and you break out in a song?”
The Lord takes no delight in the death of the sinner. Instead, He takes pleasure in cleansing sinners through the sacrifice of His Son. Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). Greater love has no God than this: that He lay down His life for His enemies (Romans 5:10). And that’s what Jesus, God in the flesh, did. Greater love has no one than the One, who is incarnate Love, Jesus Christ (John 3:16).
He is our Scapegoat, who takes our sins off into the bleak wilderness to die. He is our sacrificial Lamb, who dies in our place. He met the Law’s demands, perfect Love in the Flesh that He is. He has done what we could not—and would not do. And He did it for you. He has loved you fully, without fail, without lapse, without exception.
When Jesus did that, He also conquered His enemies, those incarnations of hate—the devil and death. As Genesis 3:15 says, prophesying Jesus’ crushing defeat of Satan: “He will crush your head, even though you [the satanic serpent] will strike His heel.”
Jesus’ cross has robbed Satan of his accusations against you. Now, no prison of his can hold you. He has no threat or punishment left to unleash on you. You are free—forgiven, cleansed, and made righteous, for you are loved in, and by, Jesus.
The solution isn’t to make deals with God. The solution is to be brought into, and live in, Christ. For when you are in Him, you have all that He is. And the Holy Spirit does exactly that, as He works through Word and Sacrament, bringing you Jesus.
If all the Law and the Prophets hang on “love God and love neighbor,” then those words also hang on something else. We can’t keep God’s Law. The Law lay broken at our feet because we broke it. But our Lord has taken our broken pieces of the Law and hangs them on a peg, on a hook, on a spiked nail. On the cross, they hang.
In His precious body, crucified on the cross, hang the demands of a holy and righteous God. The commands of the Torah, the Law, come to Jesus in ravaging blows and the scourging of whips. The dictates of God’s Word, spoken through the Prophets, come full force in spit, sweat, tears, and blood.
Scripture tells us: “[Christ] destroyed the record of debt that we owed, which stood against us and condemned us. He took it away by nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). The Law of “love God and love neighbor” was nailed to the tree of sacrifice, for on that tree their unquenchable demands were satisfied.
God treats His Son as the lawbreaker that you are, and He treats you like the Law-keeper that His son is. He promises His grace and blessing to those who keep His commandments—but He gives that grace and blessing to you because of Jesus. The Law that God gave to us at Sinai He fulfilled for us at Calvary. The Lawgiver obeys His Law, and the Judge takes the criminal’s place. And you go free.
God Himself has come to you. He has suffered for you. He has trampled down your enemy: the devil, sin, and the wrath that you deserve! For the God, who calls us to love Him and our neighbors first loved us. He came to us in Jesus Christ, taking on our flesh, our suffering, our death, and giving to us His life.
If that’s true—and it is!—then the commandment for us to love has now become an invitation. Because of Jesus, we can now approach God in love, who first approached, and first loved, us. Even more, God brings us to join the angels and archangels and the multitudes of heaven as we gather here as His people (Hebrews 12:22-24).
When Christ comes to us, that doesn’t mean that He’s no longer in heaven. He’s at both places, there in eternity and here in time. After all, He’s God! He can do that. And it’s when we receive Him as He comes to us, in His body and blood, that’s when we’re closest with the saints we love in eternity. For in Christ, we become one.
How then can we not love God? He invites us to the foretaste of the feast to come, all so we may, one day, share in the glories of heaven. Jesus deserves that, we don’t. But that’s the joy of the Gift: We get to be eternal citizens of His kingdom, even royalty. Yes, we are sinners, but Jesus has made us saints.
That’s the love of Jesus. That’s the love that fills our hearts. That’s the love that spills out in love to our neighbor. Because Jesus has met the unflinching demands of the Law for you, He has freed you in His love. That’s the Gospel of our Lord. Amen.
