Just The Two

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

JUST THE TWO

Matt 22:34-40

34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'   38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'   40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." 

NIV

It is interesting the Pharisees were questioning Jesus about which was the greatest commandment in the Law. This Law was the Law of Moses or that which was given to Moses by God, which would include the Ten Commandments as well as many of the other Laws that were given throughout the Old Testament, such as in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. It would appear they wanted Jesus to pick out one of those Laws as being greater than any of the other Laws. They still did not get the reason for the Law, in the first place, which was to show them they could not find righteousness through the Law and thus needed a Savior, who was standing right there in front of them. It is also interesting their interest in the Law as their source of being righteous, and professing Abraham as being their father, who lived before the Law and simply believed God, and his believing God was counted onto him as righteousness. We would do well to remember that as well, when we have created so many rules and regulations, we think are scriptural, or that we want to follow all the Old Testament laws, especially the Ten Commandments. However, Jesus does not refer to any of the Old Testament other than to say what he says is the greatest is what all the Law and the Prophets hang on. In other words, if we could fulfill these two, love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and love our neighbor as ourselves then we would fulfill all the Law and all the words of the Prophets. So, then we would not need to go back and get any of those laws to try to obey. If we loved God with all heart, soul, and mind and loved our neighbor as ourselves then we have done it all. The problem is how do we do those two things, or how well are we doing them? It would seem right to think that accepting Jesus, the Son of God, as our Savior, would be showing our love to God. Sometimes we think we could be distracted by thinking we can show him ours by how many “Good deeds” we do. The problem with that is non-believers can do “Good deeds”, only they are humanitarian in nature, but, nonetheless, they are still “Good deeds”. Our motives are different, but the deeds could be the same, so how does that work? No, the way to please God is to believe in the one He sent, in fact, believing in the one He sent is the work, or good deed, that God requires. That is simple enough, but this loving our neighbor is another story. There are just some people who are not easy to love. Sure, we should not have much trouble with our fellow church members, but even there, sometimes there can be conflict, jealousy, envy, gossip, judging, unforgiveness, or some other attitude that would not be in the loving category. Then there are those people we encounter out in the world. Some of them can be downright nasty folks, and how are we supposed to love them? Yet, they too are our neighbors in the sense Jesus uses that word. We think we have some more work to do just accomplishing those two commands. Yet with the help of the Spirit, we could do it.