Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, CA
✝ sdg ✝

It all comes down to love. Boy, we could all use a little more love, now, couldn’t we? Wouldn’t things go so much better for our world, for our church, in our lives in general, if everyone just followed what Jesus says are the greatest commandments? Our Lord responded to a wise scribe, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Wow. If you get love wrong, then you’re going to get the whole Bible wrong.

So what is this love? The kind of love that Jesus speaks of here is the love of sacrificial service to others. It’s the kind of love that puts others and their needs before your own. Whenever I talked to a couple about their upcoming marriage, I had never encountered a couple who wasn’t in love at that moment, even the couple I had married in their 80s! But quickly in our sessions we would discuss not the momentary, come-and-go feelings of love, but love for the long-term, defined simply as “hard work.” It’s not easy being selfless and putting others first all the time. The sinful nature doesn’t want to do it.

Love isn’t easy. It’s hard work. But then again, good things don’t come easy in a sinful world; and you have to admit that the more people work hard at love, the better off this world is. There is a real danger of love growing cold, of Christians failing to love their neighbor as they should. If we stop working hard in our love of neighbor, the neighbor who is in need will suffer while we look only to our own interests. Furthermore, our failure to work hard at love for others is a bad witness to the faith that we confess—for if God is love, how can His people not be loving? Finally, your faith delights to love and do good works; this happens by God’s design in you as a new creation. If you hold back your faith from being active in love, then you’re doing your faith great harm.

Dear friends, it is important that we love, for God has commanded us to do so. And sadly, you and I cannot end any day saying that we have truly loved enough. Martin Luther’s evening prayer was written assuming that everyone who prays it will need to say “…and I pray that you would forgive me all my sins where I have done wrong,…” praying those words at the end of every day of your life. Check it for yourself: there’s no footnote in the Catechism giving you a different prayer if you just happened to be perfect that day. There will always be times when we give in to selfishness. There will always be more people who needed love than we were willing or able to give. That’s the harsh truth of God’s Law.

This leads us to a second, greater and more dangerous sin: for it is a sin that hurts the proclamation of the Gospel. It is a teaching that goes like this: “God is love. Therefore, love is everything for us as Christians. As long as we are acting toward each other in love, then we are acting as God would have us act.” It sounds okay so far, but there’s something underneath it all that is left unsaid. If our central focus is love, then other things don’t have to matter as much: like purity. For example, take moral purity. I’ve heard more than one unmarried couple say, “We may not be married in the legal sense, but what matters is that we love each other.” That sounds so much better in terms of “love” than pointing out the fact that the couple is living in sin or fornication. In that case, their version of “love” has seemed to delete the Sixth Commandment, You shall not commit adultery.

In a similar vein, there is the argument that doctrinal purity isn’t as important as love. You can relax a bit on what you teach so that you can reach out with Christian love to more prospective believers. This idea has wreaked havoc in the Church for a couple of generations now, especially in America, where there’s so much freedom of choice in other matters. If you love people, goes the argument, you’re willing to sacrifice pure doctrine in order to care for them. And spiritual care isn’t discussed in terms of forgiveness of sins and strength through trials, but care is interpreted as changing your life behavior. Forgiveness fades off into the background because talk of sin takes time away from talking about love. So, if you insist on pure doctrine, then you are branded as unloving. Therefore, so this reasoning goes, you can either be loving or doctrinal. What a terrible either/or that is! It’s a false choice that no one has to make.

We need to make three responses to this argument, so there’s no misunderstanding:

First, it is absolutely true that God is love: the Bible says exactly that in I John 4. However, the Bible also declares that God is one—in fact, as our Old Testament lesson begins, God declares, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” There is no other. God is exclusive of all others pretending to take His place. Love and exclusivity and pure teaching and pure living all go together. To emphasize one over against the other, is to try to cut God into pieces and set Him against Himself. It’s to say that the Word made flesh must oppose the Word written and preserved in the Bible. That’s hardly loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. In other words, it is not godly to say that love and purity are opposed to each other.

The second response is this: in the Gospel for today, Jesus declares that love of God and love of neighbor are the two greatest commandments. These are the two greatest laws, for indeed they sum up the Ten Commandments. Romans 13:10 declares, “Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law.” What is the purpose of the Law? It is not to save us, for we can never love enough. The purpose of the Law is to accuse us, to show us our sin (remember learning that it’s like a mirror?). It demonstrates that we in our sinfulness cannot save ourselves, but remain lost and condemned in our efforts. When Jesus commands us to love, He does so to show us how much we can’t love. He’s telling us that we are neither loving nor holy nor righteous nor pure.

And so, thirdly: it is neither wise nor true to say that the central focus of Christianity should be our love for other people. It is inaccurate even to say that we as the Church are out with the mission to transform people’s lives and behaviors. That would be to say that the central focus of Christianity is the Law, or all the stuff we do, and the Law cannot save us. No, our foundation and central focus, our evangelism, the whole point of the Christian faith is nothing about what we do but rather about Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

This is your Good News, your joy which will not depart, your hope which will not disappoint: you are not saved by your love and loving, but by God’s love for you. By God’s love, we mean His hard work. We mean His sacrificial service. As in “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). As in Jesus’ words to His disciples at the Last Supper, just hours before the nails were driven into His hands: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). That’s the love, that’s the hard work and sacrificial service that has achieved salvation for you.

Love is the fulfillment of the Law. In perfect love for you, Jesus has fulfilled the Law in your place. He came as the Son of God, disguised in human flesh as a lowly son of David. He has dealt with all men mercifully. He fulfilled all the commandments, even those you failed to keep. Where you have spread tales and gossip and groundless speculation, He has only spoken the truth. Where you have borne a grudge against others, He sacrificed Himself to save even His accusers. Where you have failed to rebuke your neighbor and call him to repentance, Jesus proclaimed His Law and called all of us to repentance. He did not take vengeance upon those who hated Him, but prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they were truly forgiven.

And having perfectly kept all of the commandments, He then suffered God’s judgment for every sin and every lack of love that was committed by all mankind. He laid down His life as the Sacrifice for the sins of the world. He laid down His life out of love for you, to redeem you from sin for eternal life.

Your Savior still works hard in love for you today. He sits at the right hand of God not to rest, but to continue to deliver grace and faith and life to you. In love and service to you at the baptismal font, He declared, “I baptize you. I have kept all the commandments in My life, and so I share that life with you. I have died for your sins, and so I join you to My death so that you don’t have to die for yourself.” In His Holy Absolution, He declares, “I forgive you all of your sins, because I have already borne them to the cross out of My love for you.” And when He invites you to His Supper, He is the host who serves, giving you His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. That’s why it is called Divine Service, because first and foremost it is the divine Son of God who serves us. It is His love that matters, not ours. And because He first loves us, we are then set free to love others.

So we as the Church who last week celebrated the Reformation, we gladly and joyfully proclaim Christ and Him crucified, for that is the message of God’s love for your salvation. By the grace of God, we also rejoice to keep His pure doctrine, because every error has the potential to lead you away from Jesus Christ— who is the Way, the Truth and your Life. It all comes down to love. And when you hear about love, it’s God’s love—not yours, not mine. Why would you spend your time hearing a sermon that told you to do things that you know anyway, and you know that you can never do those things well enough for your salvation? You didn’t call your pastor to be a talk show host. Instead I can truthfully say that it is a privilege and joy rather to declare Jesus’ love for you—His love which saves all sinners for eternity. Your love for your neighbor is just as much a privilege for you.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
Hebrews 9:11-14 when Christ appeared as a high priest
Mark 12:28-37 You are not far from the kingdom of God.