Love, Logic, and the Lordship of Christ Text: Matthew 22:34-46
Introduction: The Heart of the Matter
We come now to a passage where the spiritual war, which had been simmering throughout Christ's ministry, comes to a full boil. This is not a polite seminar in a university faculty lounge. This is a battlefield. Jesus has just finished routing the Sadducees, the liberal, modernist wing of the Jewish establishment, leaving their theology in tatters over the question of the resurrection. And like any good pack of rivals, the Pharisees see an opportunity in the defeat of their theological opponents. They hear that the Sadducees have been silenced, and they gather themselves together. This is a war council. They believe they can succeed where the Sadducees failed. They will trap the Lord with their specialty, the Law.
What we are about to witness is a master class in cutting through religious fog. The Pharisees approach Jesus with what they believe is a clever, sophisticated, "gotcha" question, a favorite topic of their endless rabbinic debates. They want to drag Him into their petty squabbles. But Jesus refuses to play their game. He answers their question with such profound and devastating simplicity that it reorders their entire universe. And then, once He has answered their question, He turns the tables and asks them one of His own. His question is so fundamental, so logical, and so scripturally grounded that it utterly silences them. It exposes the fatal flaw in their entire religious system.
This passage presents us with two foundational questions that every human being must answer. First, what is the ultimate principle of reality? What is the point of it all? And second, who is Jesus Christ? What we will see is that you cannot get the first question right until you have the right answer to the second. The summary of the Law depends entirely on the identity of the Lawgiver.
The Text
But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. And one of them, a scholar of the Law, asked Him a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" 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 foremost commandment. And the second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets."
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, "What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?" They said to Him, "The son of David." He said to them, "Then how does David in the Spirit call Him 'Lord,' saying, 'THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, "SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I PUT YOUR ENEMIES BENEATH YOUR FEET" '? Therefore, if David calls Him 'Lord,' how is He his son?" And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask Him another question.
(Matthew 22:34-46 LSB)
The Center of Gravity (vv. 34-40)
The Pharisees send out their champion, a scholar of the Law, to test Jesus. This is not an honest inquiry; it is an examination intended to produce a failure.
"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" (Matthew 22:36 LSB)
The rabbis had catalogued 613 distinct commands in the Torah. Debating which was the "greatest" was a popular, if fruitless, pastime. Was it the command to be circumcised? To keep the Sabbath? To offer sacrifices? They hoped to force Jesus to elevate one command over the others, thereby appearing to diminish the rest. They wanted to embroil Him in their partisan minutiae.
Jesus answers by quoting the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, the central confession of Israel.
" '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 foremost commandment." (Matthew 22:37-38 LSB)
Jesus does not pick a command; He provides the principle that animates every command. This is not about external performance but internal orientation. To love God with all your heart is to love Him from the very center of your will and affections. To love Him with all your soul is to love Him with your entire being, your very life-breath. To love Him with all your mind is to love Him with your intellect, with rigorous thought, and with doctrinal clarity. This demolishes the false pieties of both sentimentalism, which divorces love from thought, and dead orthodoxy, which divorces thought from love.
This commandment is "great and foremost" because it is the foundation. All other obedience is worthless if it does not flow from this fountainhead. You can tithe your mint and cumin, you can fast twice a week, you can have your phylacteries just so, but if you do not love God, you are a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. You are playing religion.
But Jesus does not stop there. He knows that men are experts at claiming a secret, internal love for God that has no external manifestation. So He immediately links the vertical to the horizontal.
"And the second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:39-40 LSB)
The second commandment, from Leviticus 19:18, is "like" the first. It is of the same kind. It is the necessary fruit and proof of the first. John would later put it this way: if anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar. Love for your neighbor is the visible diagnostic of your invisible love for God. The two are inextricably bound. And notice the standard: "as yourself." This is not a command to have warm feelings. It is a command to actively seek the good of your neighbor with the same energy and intentionality that you naturally seek your own.
With this, Jesus declares that the entire Old Testament, all the Law and the Prophets, "hangs" on these two principles. He is not setting aside the law of God. He is revealing its central logic, its organizing structure. Every statute and ordinance is a specific application of how to love God and how to love your neighbor. The Pharisees had turned the law into a thousand disconnected rules; Jesus reveals it as one coherent whole, growing out of the character of a loving God.
The Checkmate Question (vv. 41-46)
Having perfectly answered their question, Jesus now presses His advantage. He pivots from ethics to Christology. He has just defined the what of obedience, and now He will define the who of the Savior.
"What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?" They said to Him, "The son of David." (Matthew 22:42 LSB)
He starts with a softball, a basic catechism question. They give the standard, correct answer. The Messiah was prophesied to be a descendant of King David, the heir to his throne. So far, so good. But this is where Jesus springs the logical trap.
"He said to them, 'Then how does David in the Spirit call Him "Lord," saying, "THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, 'SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I PUT YOUR ENEMIES BENEATH YOUR FEET' " '? Therefore, if David calls Him 'Lord,' how is He his son?'" (Matthew 22:43-45 LSB)
Jesus quotes Psalm 110:1, a psalm universally understood by them to be Messianic. And He premises His argument on the fact that David wrote it "in the Spirit," meaning it is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. The logic is airtight. In their culture, the ancestor is always greater than the descendant. A father does not call his son "my Lord." Yet David, the great patriarch, speaking by the Holy Spirit, refers to his own future son as "my Lord."
The question is a brilliant dilemma. How can the Messiah be simultaneously David's son (his human descendant) and David's Lord (his divine superior)? The Pharisees are trapped. Their theological grid has no place for this. They were expecting a mere man, a political king, another David. They were not expecting God in the flesh. The only possible solution to the riddle is the doctrine of the Incarnation. The Messiah had to be fully man to be the son of David, and fully God to be the Lord of David.
Their response was a deafening silence.
"And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask Him another question." (Matthew 22:46 LSB)
He had completely vanquished them. They could not refute His logic because they could not refute the Scriptures He used. Their mouths were stopped. The word here for "silenced" is the same one used to describe Jesus muzzling the demon in Mark 1:25. He had utterly shut down their opposition. Their only remaining recourse was not debate, but conspiracy and murder.
Conclusion: The Lord of Love
This confrontation leaves us in the same position as the Pharisees. We are faced with these two central issues: the Law and the Christ. And we must see that they are not separate topics. They are one.
You cannot fulfill the great commandment to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind on your own. Your heart is divided, your soul is stained, and your mind is darkened by sin. Left to yourself, the Law only condemns you. It shows you the standard you have failed to meet. The only way to fulfill the law of love is to be united by faith to the One who is both the embodiment of that law and its author.
The answer to David's riddle is the gospel. Jesus Christ is the Son of David according to the flesh, our brother, our kinsman. But He is also David's Lord, the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. He is the God we are commanded to love. He is the neighbor, par excellence, who loved us and gave Himself for us.
When you confess that Jesus is not just the son of David, but David's Lord, and your Lord, then God does a new work. He gives you a new heart that is capable of loving Him. He writes His law on that heart. He gives you His Spirit so that you can begin, imperfectly but truly, to love God and to love your neighbor.
So the question comes to us today. What do you think of the Christ? Is He merely a great teacher who gave us a summary of the law? Or is He your Lord, sitting at the right hand of the Father, putting all His enemies under His feet? Your ability to answer the first question about love depends entirely on how you answer this second question about His Lordship. Bow to David's Lord, and you will be set free to finally fulfill the law of love.