In the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew chapter 22 gives us an excellent summary of the two main teachings of the Bible. As we all learned in Catechism class, the two main teachings of the Bible are the law and the gospel. The law is God’s Word of command that tells us what to do, and the gospel is God’s Word of grace that tells us what Christ has done in our stead. God uses the law to show us our sins and our need for forgivness, and He uses the gospel to show us our Savior and how in Him we have forgivness. If you don’t understand the difference between the law and the gospel, you won’t be able to understand the Bible. Not only will it confuse you when you read it, but you’ll end up reading it wrong. You’ll assume that the law passages are actually gospel, that the gospel passages are actually law, and get all mixed up about your salvation.

That’s exactly what happened with the Pharisees. They didn’t understand the difference between the law and the gospel. They thought that the reason why God gave us His law was so that we could save ourselves by keeping it. They had reduced God’s law into a list of rules, 613 to be exact, and they taught that as long as you followed the rules you’d be saved. That’s why they asked Jesus about which rule was the most important. They didn’t care about which one He picked. They just wanted Him to pick one of them. Then they could argue with Him about whether or not He was right, just like they argued with each other. Which rule is more important? Is it the rule about keeping the Sabbath day? Is it the rule about tithing, or giving money to the poor? Is it the rule about not taking God’s Name in vain?

But Jesus didn’t pick one of their rules, did He? In fact, He didn’t reduce God’s law into a set of rules at all. Instead, He summarized all of the law at once with two simple commands. First, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and second, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” As Jesus said, “On these two commands depend all the Law and the prophets.”

God’s law is about much more than just following a set of rules. It’s about loving Him above everything else and loving your neighbor as yourself. It’s a lot easier to follow a couple of rules than it is to actually love someone. For example, you can make a rule about how you have to go to church. That’s a good rule. You should go to church. But just because someone comes to church every Sunday, and follows that commandment in an outward way, that doesn’t mean that they’ve actually kept it their heart. What if you only come to church to make your parents happy? What if you come to church, but you hate being there and don’t want to listen to anything? What if you come to church because you think that the very act of showing up gets you some kind credit with God? Is that what it really means to keep the 3rd commandment? Are you really loving God from the bottom of your heart when you do that? No. You’re’ just following a rule.

Or what about a rule like, “you shouldn’t gamble.” That’s a good rule too. You shouldn’t gamble. Gambling is a sin. The only way that you make money when you gamble is by taking it from someone else. There’s no honest labor there. There’s no exchange of goods and services and actually serving your neighbor. And how can you even gamble without being greedy? How can you try and win a bunch of money without coveting something that you don’t already have? Of course, Christians shouldn’t gamble! That should be obvious. But just because you don’t gamble, and you don’t break that rule, it doesn’t mean you’ve actually kept God’s law. Lots of rich people don’t gamble because they know that the house always wins. The reason why they don’t play the slot machines or bet on sports isn’t because they’re concerned with being greedy. It’s precisely because they are greedy. They don’t want to lose their money. So, so what if they don’t gamble? So, what if they follow that rule? That doesn’t mean that they’re loving their neighbor like God wants us to. 

God’s law is more than just a list of rules. What God cares about from us, and what His law demands, goes far beyond what we do on the outside. It goes right to our very heart. God doesn’t just want us to behave in a certain way, He wants us to be a certain way. That’s what His law is about. That’s what His law really is.

When we stop looking at God’s law as a list of rules and start seeing it for what it is, we also start to see something else too. We start to see just how much we fail to keep. We start to recognize just how much we aren’t the way that we’re supposed to be, and how far away from God’s will we’ve actually fallen. Who loves God with their whole heart, soul, and mind? Who is perfectly united with every single desire that God has, and never wants anything different than what He says is good for us in the Bible? And who has loved his neighbor as himself? Who has been just as much concerned all the time with the needs of others as they are their own? Have you ever had an impure thought about another person? Have you ever coveted something that belonged to someone else? Have you ever said something about another person, that you know you’d never want to be said about yourself? If you have, and you know you have, then you haven’t kept God’s law.

The law of God doesn’t show us how to save ourselves. It shows us that we need salvation. It shows us how impossible it is for salvation to come from us and how the only way that we can be saved is if it comes from someplace else. And that’s what Jesus was trying to show the Pharisees with His question. They asked Him about the law and He showed them how they had the law all wrong. Then He asked them about the gospel, and they showed Him that they didn’t have that right either. 

What exactly was the question that Jesus asked the Pharisees? He said, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is He.” Then they said back to Him, “the Son of David.” To which Jesus replied, “how is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”

The point that Jesus was trying to make with his question is that just like the Pharisees didn’t understand the law, because they had reduced it to a set of rules, they didn’t understand the gospel, because they had reduced the Messiah to a mere man. Yes, they were willing to accept that the Messiah was the son of David, but they couldn’t explain why David also called Him his Lord. How could it be that before the Messiah was even born, He had a conversation with God, and they both talked about each other as equals? The answer is obvious, and the implication is obvious too. The Messiah is more than just a man, He is God Himself. And if the Messiah is God Himself, then He must have come to do much more than what the Pharisees thought He would. He must have come not just to set up a worldly kingdom, and return the Jewish people to their political power. He must have come to set up an eternal kingdom where salvation alone is to be found.

That is who the Messiah is. And that is what the gospel is. The gospel is not about what we do for God. It’s about what He does for us. It’s about how we have eternal salvation in Jesus. It’s about how God sent His very own Son to put all of our enemies under His feet. Who are our true enemies? Are they foreign nations that try and attack us? Are they people who make fun of us or treat us poorly as work or school? Can any of those people keep us out of heaven? No! Our true enemies are sin, death, and the devil. That’s what prevents us from being able to be saved on our own, and so that’s what the Messiah has come to save us from.

Your problem is not just that you break a couple of God’s rules now and again. Your problem is that you’re not who you’re supposed to be. Down to your very core, something is very wrong. When you look at God’s law and see it for what it actually requires, you should know it. You should know that you haven’t loved God with your whole heart or your neighbor as yourself. And that’s why you can’t look to God’s law for your salvation. That’s why you have to look to Jesus instead. Jesus is everything that you aren’t, and everything that you should be at the same time. Yes, He is a man, just like you. He’s David’s son. But He’s also David’s Lord. And He’s your Lord too. He is the Savior of sinners. He takes all of your sin, and the sin of the whole world, and bears it as His own so that by grace He can give you His forgivness. He takes all of your law breaking, and through faith He exchanges it for all of His law keeping. 

If you look for salvation in the law, you’ll never find it. If you try and reduce God’s law into a set of rules, that doesn’t mean that you’ve actually kept it. But if you look for salvation in the gospel, if you look for salvation in Jesus and what He’s done for you, then you’ll have real confidence. Then you’ll see someone who does love God with His whole, heart, soul, and mind, and who does love His neighbor as Himself. And when you see Him suffering and dying anyway, like you should have suffered and died, you can be certain that He did it in your place, and that all of your sins have been forgiven. You can rest on the certainly of the gospel, and let the law do its work of condemning you, because you have a Messiah in Jesus. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.