The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
25 September, Anno Domini 2016
St. Matthew 22:34-36
Pr. Kurt Ulmer
Though they may at first seem disconnected, the two questions posed in today’s Gospel hold up for us the two most important things every Christian needs to know, understand, exercise themselves in, and meditate on every single day.
The first is the proper understanding of the depth and purpose of the Ten Commandments. The lawyer’s question betrays the hardness of our hearts. We ALL want to know which of the commandments is most important so that we can focus our energies on that one. We are minimalists by nature – what is the least I can do to make God happy and still call myself a Christian? We want to indulge as much of our selfish nature as we can – look but don’t touch, covet but don’t steal, hate but don’t murder, offer but don’t tithe. We think that what God is after is simply the outward act of obedience. As long as showed up on Sunday morning enough times. As long as my gossip is true. As long as I never hit my wife. As long as no one ever knows about my addiction. Repent. It was exactly this way of approaching God’s commands that earned Cain his judgment and led him to murder his brother.
Jesus cut right to the heart of the matter and ripped off the band-aid of our self-righteousness. What is the greatest commandment? Love God with every last fiber of your being every second of every day – period. Every single thought, every single word, every single action should flow from a completely selfless love of God and your neighbor. God isn’t interested in acts of obedience. He isn’t interested in shows of piety or spirituality or humility that only run skin deep. He and He alone is to be your God. Your heart should never desire or delight or take comfort in anything other than God’s will, in what He has commanded, in the word that He speaks, in the gifts that He gives. If it is His good pleasure that you enjoy a time of gladness or abundance, so be it. Whatever He blesses you with you should only desire to use to His glory and for the benefit of your neighbor. If it is His good pleasure that you endure suffering, poverty, hardship, loss, so be it. Praise be to God. We should receive such difficulties with as much joy as we received the abundance.
I have failed – miserably. You have failed – miserably. All men have failed – miserably. Our hearts are cesspools of selfishness, idolatry, fear, greed, lust, discontent, worry. We are dead in our sins and our trespasses. We do not love God with all our heart, soul, mind, or body. We do not love our neighbor as ourselves. That is what the Law will always show you. When you stare into the crystal clear mirror of the Ten Commandments the only thing you will find staring back at you is failure. There is no almost. There is no good enough. There is no commandment you have kept with a pure heart. There is no life left in you, no good desires, no love. We are turned away from God and in on ourselves. Why don’t we keep the commandments? Why can’t we say of at least one of them “I’ve kept that one”? Because we hate God.
That is the most painful truth to admit. Jesus wasn’t playing games or showing His rhetorical genius when He answered the lawyer as He did. He knew that He was dealing with eternal life and death – for the lawyer and for us. If the true root and depth of our sin aren’t exposed, then the answer to Jesus’ question won’t matter. If you aren’t a sinner through and through, if you’ve only made mistakes in your life, if you believe there is even the tiniest spark of good left in you that sin hasn’t infected – then the bloodied man hanging from Golgotha’s cross seems a waste, an excessive and unnecessary act on God’s part. If you just need some motivation and encouragement to make it through week, then the Christ might as well just be David’s son and the greatest life coach earth has ever seen. If your sin doesn’t reveal to you the dark truth of your heart’s condition, then the washing of rebirth and renewal is little more than a nice ritual. If every unrighteous thought, every unkind word, every lustful glance, every half-hearted “Amen” doesn’t wreak of death, then the idea of hungering and thirsting for the life-giving Body and Blood given from this altar will sound like over-zealous religious voodoo.
But the Christ is David’s Lord. This is the second point that Jesus makes through His follow-up question. Jesus is the Son of God, born of house of His servant and father David. He is the fullness of the Godhead, dwelling bodily. He is the exact imprint of God’s essence. And to the heart struck by the terror of it’s guilt under the just condemnation of the Law, there can be no more beautiful sight than Jesus pierced and dying because the sinless Son of David who did love God with all His heart, soul, body, and mind, the One who knew no sin, became sin for us – for you. There the Lamb of God became the most wretched and despised of men. Dear sinner, look upon God’s anointed and see your sin, your rebellion, your hatred of God, your death crushed, condemned, destroyed forever. Nothing remains. It is finished. You were once dead, but Christ has risen from the dead and you with Him. Death, the power of sin, has been removed from you because sin has been removed from you. You are righteous because the God and son of David has declared you to be so.
This is why we cling so vigorously and insist upon the doctrine of the Christ’s two natures. No mere man, no one whose very nature was as saturated with sin as ours could possibly make payment for us. No, only innocent blood would be sufficient. But among those born to men, there is no one who does good, no one who seeks after God. No, not one. Only God Himself could pay the price. But if He was to die for us, if His sacrifice was to be for our good, He also had to become one of us, like us in every respect, except that He knew no sin. And so He suffered hunger and thirst, fatigue, disappointment, and every temptation the devil knows how to dish out. The difference is – he loved His Father. And because He loved His Father perfectly, He loved you perfectly, submitting Himself in every way to your good. The Law cannot condemn you because it condemned Jesus in full, not for His sin but for yours, for mine, for the sins of the whole world. St. Paul put it beautifully when he wrote in Romans 8 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” There is no condemnation for you. That’s worth repeating and hearing again. There is NO condemnation for you. There is no judgment to be afraid of. Your guilt has been laid upon Jesus, and His righteousness has been laid upon in you in the most irrational and most beautiful exchange to have ever taken place – the guiltless for the guilty, the sinless for the sinner, life for death, God for man.
You have been given the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. The life you now live, you live to God in Christ Jesus, not by your own doing or choosing, but by the Spirit who descended upon you the day your Old Adam was drowned in the waters of the font. You no longer live because you have died. But Christ lives in you and through you carries out His will – loves His Father, loves His neighbor. In Him you are enriched in all speech and knowledge – no longer looking for comfort in works of the Law but in the wounds, in the death, and in the resurrection of Jesus all of which are fed to you in the Holy Supper and sustain you to the end. So, what do you say about the Christ? God grant by His Holy Spirit that the answer is always “He is my Lord who has redeemed me by His blood.”