And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’— Matthew 22:37–40
“Love is the grand secret of true obedience to God.” At Sinai, God’s moral law was given in the form of the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:2–17; Deut. 5:6–21). In Matthew 22:37–40, Jesus gives a concise and searching summary of this law, distilling it into two all-encompassing commandments: 1) Love God, and 2) Love your neighbor.
The love that God’s law demands presents a problem for approaching God, because we’re not loving by nature. We may love in a sense—the love that a mother has for her child, or the love between a husband and wife, or even the love friends have for one another. But sin disrupts true love for God and neighbor. Our love for the things of this world prevents true love of God (1 John 2:15) and our self-interested sinful tendencies produce hatred of our neighbor (Titus 3:3).
In Matthew 19, a rich young man came to Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life (Matt. 19:16–22). He prided himself on keeping many of God’s commandments, but Jesus put his finger on a problem in his heart when he told him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” This isn’t a general command for everyone to obey. It was an application of the command to love your neighbor as yourself, applied to what Jesus knew was in the young man’s heart. Rather than express a generous love for his neighbor, he “went away sorrowful” (Matt. 19:22), because his attachment to things of this world proved he didn’t love his neighbor, and in truth, neither did he love God.
The young man’s problem couldn’t be solved by selling his possessions. What Jesus revealed in this encounter is that the law should bring us to the end of our confidence that we can inherit eternal life by keeping it. In fact, we can’t keep the law. Only the Spirit can produce love for God and neighbor: “The fruit of the Spirit is love...” (Gal 5:22).
When we learn this important lesson, we won’t have to go away sorrowful like the rich young man. We will instead run to Jesus for forgiveness—and for his righteousness applied to us—not by works, but by faith (Rom 3:21-26). As the Spirit produces fruit in us, we will carefully devote ourselves to keeping the great commandments: to love God and to love others (Titus 3:8).
Footnotes
J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Matthew, 293.
